Boat boy

I began work on the image for my most recent plate this week. I'm still fully developing my ideas for a series of work , but this is the first sneak-peak of what's to come.

New Plate!

After putting to rest an old project and having a successful opening, it's time to move onto new things! I'm looking to start pushing my work in a different direction through the winter and into the warmer months.

Working in Mezzotint will continue to be at the root of my creative process. With only a small number of artists actually out there and using this technique I've found it challenging to troubleshoot when things aren't going according to plans. I feel like I'm always learning new things with each project, and making new discoveries about bettering my process.

I was recently given this amazing book by artist and author Carol Wax about Mezzotint, and it's more or less the only book out there on the subject. If there were a bible for the technique, this would be it! It's been instrumental in helping me along the way, particularly as if late.

I'm currently experimenting with better ways to prepare the surface of my plates and really minimize the physical impact and strain it has on my body. I think I'm making great strides! Here's what I've found:

1. Rocker MUST be sharp! Also, Sharpen often. Below us a picture of the sharpening jig I made which has the rocker hook onto a mount and pivot from left to right across the sharpening stone at the same angle as the teeth of the rocker blade. Works like a charm!

2. Pressure MUST be consistent. I added a sharpening stone as a weight to my rocking pole to keep pressure constant and consistent... And it saves me on putting strain on my body!

3. Be precise about rocking directions. 0 deg, 15 deg , 30 deg, 45 deg.... And so on until a full rotation of the plate has been made.

As I take these considerations into account for prepping this plate, I'm seeing some real results which I think will really serve to help make the final print a great success! Below is also a picture of the plate texture that i'm creating.

Rusting Copper

Moving from the highly reflective and complicated chrome faucets to the rusting copper pipe was quite a shift in gears. I found the texture in the rusting challenging, but intriguing. Working in layers proved to be the most advantageous. I started quite dark and then added layers of blue and green mixed with ochre.

I really enjoyed painting this.

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Ceci n'est pas une pipe

This week I have turned attention to the pipe below the sink. As an introduction to something I have never painted before, I have been studying many images including verdigris rusting, hoping some of what I see will help me to translate something realistic to the canvas. I have collected images and tacked them to my canvas. Direct references are only one part of my practice. Having inspiration or work I admire present is so very encouraging.



Lucien Freud painted Two Japanese Wrestlers By a Sink in 1983. I first saw this thumbing through a book at college, when Freud was a prominent influence for me. The image has stuck with me through the years, perhaps because there is not very much still life work in his catalog, but mostly because it taught me that still life can show so much movement.


Josephine Halvorson is a contemporary US painter. I met her work a few months ago through a blog post on New American Paintings. Her effort is to focus on uber mundane things. Her painting's subject images we can sink our teeth into, like this door with chipping paint, however she also takes her subject matter into obscurity. Works of elusive factory machinery and construction barriers leave their mark on the viewer. I find her work exciting and powerful.

Her image is tacked to my canvas also because it is a admirable example of white, chipping paint which I will consider as I work on the white part of the pipe.



Antonio Lopez Garcia is a Spanish realist painter. I happened on this painting during quite a random Google image search and I am so very happy that I did. I am absolutely enamored with his paintings! His still life images strike as very similar to how I would like to make a still life image. He makes his paintings from life and over years, coming to sit each day in the same place at the same time, until the next day, when he resumes his seat. I find it incredibly interesting to think that his relationship to this painting marks the years passing, adding a biographical consideration.

A lovely introduction to his work can be seen here.

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Finally!

So i finally nailed it! After 3 laborious attempts at completing this print I finally got a good proof and I'll now print the edition. I'll leave it at that... What a relief!

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Fall to Winter

We're Back! About three months ago, Laine and I were having end of summer pints discussing our commitment to our work. It seemed silly that we stopped our weekly posts and so the decision was made to bring it back to life.

I am 24 sits into this painting at the moment. The details are staggering. The faucet knobs pictured below illustrate my process and how I paint and repaint to try to get the work to look the way that I see it in my mind. The left shows the knob with around 5 hours put into it, the right, I can only guess, around 7. What is interesting is that when I took the photo of the one on the left, I felt quite satisfied with it, thinking that it was adequately representational.

But then as I continued with other parts of the painting, my eyes would carry over to it and a gripping dis-satisfaction started to creep in. I started re working and repainting it and I am happy that I did so, because the patterns that have started to appear now in the reflections and the sculpture are so much closer to the way my mind imagines it.

Time to get cookin'!

Well clearly it's been a long time... in fact one might have thought we were  done!   It seems that both of us got way too caught up with life and making things that there simply wasn't any time left to get on here and blog about it all, but guess what!... we're back, and have lots of things in the works for the winter months.

I'm going to hold out on posting anything about my current project because it's actually a V 3.0 remake of my Tortoise-hare mezzotint from about a year and a half ago.  Long story short was that it was completely botched from the way I originally prepared the plate, and subsequently that showed through in the final print.  Currently I'm in the final stages of getting the image scraped out onto a newly prepared plate and should have some better results and some images soon.

It's funny how such epic failure (maybe not so epic, just time consuming) can be a great point to make some major strides.  I realized that I needed to get better rocking on my plates and it needed to be even, and a strong, and save my wrist from strain.  I devised this little device to help me out from here on in.  It's actually a very simple construction but it works like a charm and not only saves my wrist, and gives great texture to the plate,... it cuts my prep time in SIGNIFICANTLY!  

I'll leave on a hight note with lots more to come as we push towards the colder months, and the new year!