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proof of finished drypoint plate:

test proof (on scraps) of etching plate that goes underneath to add colour:

composite done in corel to give an idea of how the two will work together in the final print (any grey tone in the etching will be either blue or red in the edition. Possibly green too):

it’s VERY cool to be able to do these “what if I …? things with prints etc before having to commit to potentially stuffing-everything-up changes IRL.

If you’re interested in all the printmaking methods etc, I found an excellent site with all sorts of interesting & approachable articles & how-tos: http://www.nontoxicprint.com/introduction.htm … the interwebs rock, eh? It was MUCH harder to find info like this last time I was studying art! lol

right now I’m for bed; so tired I’m actually feeling kind of chucky. Stupid scanner wouldn’t install, and I fell over this afternoon rushing around trying to get that test print done & ready to split in time to pick E up from school (cannot WAIT for the after school program to start back up), and I have a really nasty SOMETHING on the back of my upper arm. I don’t know if it’s some sort of boil thing (never had one, no idea what they’re like) or a particularly nasty insect bite, but it’s big and red and swollen and it HURTS, so if I drop dead tomorrow tell them to check the stupid lump out just in case.

for a post title.

More stuff wot we bin doin at school. I won’t bore you with the pictures, but we’ve to do TWENTY drawings of a white bowl in our sketchbooks. Or a bucket, if you’d prefer. TWENTY. The same bowl/bucket, but it’s okay to change angles a little between each drawing. Each one to pretty much fill the page. Use different drawing implements – draw in white oil pastel then smear ink over top (cool effect), shade a page then push/pull lights & darks from it, charcoal, graphite, coloured pencil (browns only), oil pastel, pastel, whatever. Experimenting with mark making again, not going for fussyass perfection.

Anyway. I remembered to take my camera this week, and got a detail shot of the embossing on that first project. I still want to run it through the press on blank paper. I think it’s going to kill me having to give up printmaking after 2 more Tuesdays … I mean yay painting, but I want to FINISH some things I got excited about! Denise & I got talking to Geoff yesterday (okay, so we were stickybeaking about the racket he was making) and he’s setting up to run a workshop on paperclay during the June (? July? whatever) break, which sounds pretty awesome. He said it certainly isn’t necessary but definitely would not be a disadvantage leading up to our ceramics segment in the following semester, and that we’re very welcome to join in. He’s open to the idea of me doing a doll series, which would so rock (I’ve been wanting to get these bloody doll/sculpture things done for AGES). He also mistook me for Celestine again, so today I dragged her over there and stood us in front of him & said “Hey Geoff! This is Celestine … and this is Sion! Celestine, Sion” and he called me a cheeky bugger. Who me? heh. Celestine said I have more hair & bigger tits, usually that’s the sort of thing that blokes usually pick up on … I said mmmaybe, but then again eh, fat middle-aged chicks, where’s the benefit in noticing details? lol

We proofed our drypoints today. Well most of us proofed the drypoints we sensibly did over the holidays, but certain people spent most of the day roughing an idea and then scratching the image and had to do a rush proof of an incomplete plate (to see how well various marks were working) at 2.45 because after school sports hasn’t started yet and princesses need to be picked up at 3.15 … anyhoo, so you can see I kept the rough pretty short on detail so I could preserve SOME degree of spontaneity of line & detail. The plate looks pretty groovy.

There’s a big section on the top left of the plate (top right of the print below) that’s incomplete, and now I know I don’t need to further cripple my poor arthritic finger to finish it I’m a happy bunny. Ima need to do a much better job with plate wiping when I want to pull a proper print, but like I said, it was a rush job.

Wendy showed us a mad neat etching method this afternoon using aluminium plates and copper sulphate. SO COOL. So much easier – SO, SO, SO – than traditional grounds and acids. So we’re supposed to be making our drypoint and out etching work together, either one on top of another or as a set or whatever. The prints are just lovely, and you can get such awesome painterly (drippy! Splashy! Brushmarky!) effects as well as drawing-like marks (it’s almost like reverse lithography if you draw on the plate with oil pastels – your line stays white/pale), or you can cover the plate with tape and scrape/cut through it so it’s a stencil, or you can lay down a ground of oil pastel and scratch through it. I can’t get over the simplicity and versatility of it, and all without nastyass acid fumes and rosin and shit. I want to do some colour blocks (red shoes, blue beard, etc) to go underneath the drypoint. Anyway so I’ve brought my plate home to play with, and hopefully I’ll get the drypoint finished and the etching plate done so I can print next week and then maybe I’ll get a chance to try the jigsaw print on the lily maid linocut.

Hi!

School is fun. The first day of class, Wendy had us doing mark-making exercises (Wendy likes us to make marks, does Wendy). After making our many marks on 3 sheets, each group of 3 or 4 students had to arrange their drawings in a grid and do some more mark making on the whole, using pastels taped to long sticks (Wendy likes things taped to sticks too). Then we had to mix the grid up, find another arrangement we liked, and tape it all together. After hanging them on the wall, and after a bit of general critique, we had to add more to unify them, and then we could choose one colour and do some more stuff on it. Kerry seemed to get into it for reals, I eventually shrugged and got over my chronic fear of Doing Things Wrong and threw myself into it in a “what the hell” kind of way, and Jo ended up staying away from the crazy ladies, offering directorial input from a safe distance. So, there it is … masterpiece, innit? lol

The next day we did some experimental printing. First we all tromped down to the food park to find things to draw based on the seed/germination, growth, maturity/decay theme we’d been given. And to be bitten by many mosquitos and stabbed by plants we didn’t realise were stabby and so on, and in my case to take really crappy reference photos with my phone. Witness the bunya in all its blurry component glory (the research I did at home later indicated that scrubbing around on the ground underneath a bunya pine with fresh cones underneath is kind of the opposite of smart, since those cones weigh several kilos and are the size of your head and fall from a bloody great height without warning. I might have to put that in my “hazards of printmaking” OHS checklist).
See that on the left there? I left my fingers in so you can see how big the cones are based on how big that one segment (each one of these bits, which thankyou have a really sharp spike at the centre, protects and nourishes a single seed) Anyway so I photographed and collected a few nuts and did some drawings and bark rubbings, all in all spending about an hour under this killer tree complaining about the mozzies and ants because I was unaware (although it seems bloody obvious in retrospect, of course) of the Danger From Above. When I got sick of that I took a dry branch to a picnic bench and drew that while a sodding great march fly sized me up. I said to hell with this about when the bastard got me (they’re like a friggin needle biopsy on wings, without benefit of anaesthesia. I am not kidding, they HURT – ask Billy Connolly if you don’t believe me; I nearly hurt myself laughing at his “it’s @#$@# NOVEMBER!!!” rant mumblety years ago) and went back to the classroom.

Back in the print room we had to use sketches as a basis for making some monoprints from acetate, paper and/or sheets of ply. I cut a sprouting seed (aka bunya nut) in half and drew it umpteen times. I like printing. I get a kick out of the multiplicity, so monoprints aren’t *quite* as much fun in that way, but it is (or can be) more painterly & more immediate. Anyway, so these are images of a seed, no matter what else you may think they resemble. I mostly used acetate cut into A6 pieces; inked one up and scraped away to get an image, drew on another with the ink using a cotton bud. I inked up a piece of ply, lay paper on top and scribbled a drawing with a nail to get an image; that was fun but I apparently forgot to take a pic.

Homework for print was to make a “drypoint” (mine was more like an engraving in the end, I think most were) using a shellacked cardboard plate. The plates themselves are really lovely, but it’s a bitch to cut – the incipient arthritis in my right finger was totally on fire by the time I’d done my plate. I’d like to work with it some more – cheap, readily available, and nice artefacts in themselves; what’s not to like? – but I’d have to figure out a way to cut the plate that didn’t cripple me. Anyhows, I really love the little print I made from that block, and am sorely tempted to try and run off a little edition. Excuse oddly blurry photo; the phone has a really weird focal thing happening. I also at home made a large embossing plate of the leaves, which I just love love love but it’s well-nigh impossible to get a pic of the results. Take my word for it, it looks wild in the paper. I guess I could photograph the plate itself, but that isn’t happening tonight :) In the end I stuffed up the other two prints for that project (we had to do 3 or more prints on the one long page, using several techniques) and screwed up on the alignment of plates etc to boot so the final print is a real disappointment to me. Boo! If I get a chance I’m going to run off an emboss of those leaves on blank paper tho, just for the hell of it.

What else. More mark-making and stuff in drawing, and of course I’m rounded up about being too tight and needing to cut loose and go wild and stuff (she thinks I’m bad now, she shoulda seen me 20 yrs ago lol). Water off a duck’s back except when I already know she’s got a point – I’m not combative and I think she’s marvellous, I just ain’t that kind of angel drawer (?). Artist. Whatever. Heh, I’m probably going to drive her insane during painting. Anyway, markmaking yay, still life sketching yay, and then I got sick and missed two weeks of school, boo. I did a metric buttload of research on the computer mostly, and grumbled a lot. Jo was kind enough to answer my emails and fill me in on what I was missing out on, so I obediently painted a rock white and filled a page with grayscale drawings of it. My parents were all “ooookay …” about it, and Miss E said my teacher was silly, but it’s a pretty cool exercise really.

When I went back this week, I did my overdue presentation on realism & the barbizon school and recounted my OMG-I’m-a-dumbass epiphany regarding Realism being about mindset not the painting style, which probably everybody else who ever studied art history ever grokked immediately and I’m just totally dense for never being able to figure out why it was called Realism when some of it is totally not realistically representational. Even though I’d READ all the stuff about the philosophy etc, it just never sank in and then all of a sudden it did. Wendy clapped heh. In the afternoon we did some more experimental drawing stuff – go get an organic something and come back & draw it. After drawing it we had to throw the drawing on the floor and copy it onto a larger sheet of paper using a crayon taped to a stick, again (same piece of paper, overlapping etc) with a marker taped to a stick, and then in ink using a cotton bud taped to a stick. Then we had to go over to the wall where Wendy had taped a bunch of sheets and draw our object from memory using the toolset we’d liked most, then the one we’d liked least, and then go over with the original object using a pencil or whatever. So there you have it, a drawing by the whole class :)

Last day of term, everybody finished off a relief edition, either woodcut or linocut (well vinyl actually I think, odd stuff). After getting Wendy’s okay on my subject matter & rough drawing the day before, I stayed up until all hours cutting my block (stabbing my finger in the process, which was hellaciously and bloodily exciting I tellyouwhat. Glad I have a styptic pencil or I might have bled to death lol). Only got it half finished so I was pretty flatstrap all morning carving away. Got a little edition – not perfect, but Wendy said it was fine because she knows I can do it – done by about 2.30 though, which was pretty damn good I thought. I’m not at all sure I like these waterbased inks … I understand the toxicity concerns (and really, I’m the last person who needs to be messing with a depressant like turps) but all the same … I don’t feel like I’m getting enough time to properly explore how the inks really work, how much pressure you need, blah blah blah. Not keen on the fact that they remain water soluble either, to be honest. I’m also wondering whether this pseudo-lino would print a richer black if the surface were roughed up a little with sandpaper say. Anyway, I rather like my lily maid. I think it needs a bit more work though – I messed around in Corel to see if my idea re cutting a bit more of the hair away would work (I think it does, what do you reckon?). While I was at it I toyed with ideas for turning it into a jigsaw print (which I didn’t have time to get done, but W says the few of us who were away sick might be able to do it after break). Thoughts?

more white in the hair

adding a little colour

going nuts with colour ...

Okay, that’s it for now, I’m off to bed!

the first vessel is “finished” in one sense; about ready for some wax. I might trim the dangly bits a bit first.

I must admit that I kind of like it lying down …

ETA: it’s not functional, at least not specifically, although it is capable of containing things (and will be more so once it’s waxed). It’s a vaguely gourd-like fabric vessel. Fabric sculpture might be a better way to think of it. The pre-wankified version of the artist’s statement would be something about how I was suddenly struck one day by this concept of woman as vessel – of and for herself, her self, not vessel for others, not just a container for everyone else – and an image of a vessel full of possibility. Keywords primitive, tribal, organic, secrets, seeds, space, expectancy, belly, spine. The original drawing was different in a few ways (I’d post it, but it’s at home), and I’m still intending to make that one – this one was kind of a sample & pattern test, but I got to liking it. There’s another one I’m still trying to figure out the making of and (since it has a pointy bottom) what to hang it from; think I’m going to need to do some wire work. Hrm, or maybe play with some willow. Willow is extremely cool. Hrm …

it occurred to me today that I should set mum up with a blog of her own to brag in. Not that I’m averse to bragging on her myself, but it might be fun for her. She’d have to promise not to grumble about her sloppy daughter though …

here are a few pics of another bag. I think she’s got another 3 or 4 (differing constructions & feeltones) in the works, at least two finished or nearly so. This one’s in the shop for $45 $60 (oops, my mistake).

Scribbler, which I found courtesy of Susie Monday, is totally awesome. Decided to show a couple of stages of some quick sketches. Last one, as you can see I tried playing with the colour & transparency & line thickness options. Extremely cool little widget.