Black field with white

I prepped some plates for a demo on indirect drawing,or the "Paul Klee technique" as my boss calls it, but I over inked them, so they never dried to the right consistency. I put them outside for a couple of hours, hoping that the sun would speed up the drying a little but instead the wind deposited a large amount of debris on the surface of the ink. Rather than waste them, I quickly cut out a silhouette, placed it at the bottom of the plate, and ran a print from it.

I like it so much, that I salvaged one of the sheets that someone else threw away from the garbage, soaked it, and ran the ghost on it. The sheet had been crumpled and had a layer of wheatpaste one it already from the previous failed print, imparting an interesting texture to the final image.

The little boy, probably only six

I found this pencil at work while looking for something to draw with.

Monotype workshop, session 2.5: Viscosity

The second session of the workshop I taught viscosity inking. Viscosity, mostly because I think it sort of has to be covered even if it ends up going over most people's heads. Carla, one of the students, pointed out that I use many food metaphors when I discuss technique--for viscosity, and the way the thin ink resists the stiff ink, I used the example of cocoa powder poured over water failing to mix, but mixes the other way around.

The face I draw when people watch me draw is pretty obvious and repetitive. My repertoire of things I can draw while talking and being observed is now this face, a skull, and maybe hands doing something. I need to expand.

The blue shirt is the viscosity roll, and I finished theprint by added a couple of blue arrows from a potato stamp:

This fellow is a two plate print, with the first print utilizing viscosity inking for the light blue part of the pajamas:

And here's another version of the same image. I reworked it from the ghost of the previous print, but I changed the color so much it's not really evident.

Monotype workshop, session 2: Chine Colle

The second session of the monotype workshop at Josephine Press I taught chine colle and viscosity inking. Chine colle is always a big hit, and even though I have a tendency to use the neutrals and muted tones for my demos, students always love getting into the patterned and colorful washi papers for their own prints. Anyhow, the night before this workshop I drew two skulls on pieces of washi, one deer skull and one marmot skull. Washi is so thin that it often doesn't stand up to erasing at all, so I just let the mistakes stay in the finished drawing. I also used the Epson 2000 we have at Josephine Press to print up some photographs on to some coated washi from Hiromi paper. That way, I could show them how to make an archival print that still has the collaged look of magazine and newspaper clippings, though, to be honest, I think my cat monster didn't turn out so hot. If I have time, I'll probably add another layer to it.

The two chine colle-ed prints with pre-drawn washi:

And here's a ghost (a ghost is when you use the ink left on the plate after printing,) printed from one of the previous images:

The Cat Monster chine colle, but I think it's unfinished:

And then lastly, I made this guy, inspired by a recent villain on Adventure Time, just to give a quick refresher on stencilling, the lesson from the first week:

I went to LACMA for the only showing at the Tarkovsky retrospective that I could make it to, Andrei Rubliev. It was just as long as I had hoped it would be, and then a little bit more than that even. Behind us a girl I knew and her mother spoke in Russian. I thought of the things that they heard that I could not as we watched the movie. Their mouths were the same pouted shape of the protoganist whose invented biography disjointedly was relayed. It was violent, implied, as actors had throats slashed by Tatars, clutching tubes to their necks so that dark grey fluid would pump across their white necks and onto the equally grey mud.

Polystyrene

As part of the workshop I taught in Salt Lake last month (check the last blog entry), I researched what substrates could receive ink beyond just paper. Fabric is an obvious solution that I've explored extensively, but I also found that polystyrene plastic takes acrylic screen ink wonderfully

Here's the skeleton girl screenprint on polystyrene with colored pencil, cut and ready to be reduced in the oven:



An illustration of just how much the polystyrene reduces:



One of the issues I'm coming ot understand is that the colors intensify--the individual marks are moved closer together, so the color appears more concentrated after reducing the image.

I added drilled the holes into the pieces to joint the doll after reducing using a 1/16th drill bit, and added a jump ring and silver chain:



This guy reduced a little more, maybe because I left it in longer:



I used plastic adhesive to attach a pin backing, making the little acrobat a brooch:

Monotype workshop, session 1

Saturday, November 12th, was the first session for the monotype workshop I'm teaching at Josephine Press. We covered basic stuff, inking and stencilling. Here are two of the three prints I made as part of the demo. The skeleton in cat ears I finished by adding a blue background with watercolor.

Tradigital, 1

A couple months ago, I started working at Josephine Press in Santa Monica. It's a small press that publishes a few prints, does some workshops, etc. Josephine does a lot of "tradigital" work, prints that combine digital and traditional techniques. Mostly, theses are intaglio and relief prints over digital backgrounds. The digital part is often very colorful, which is taking some getting used to for me. John Greco, the master printer at Josephine, had me make two tradigital relief prints using photopolymer plates and digital backgrounds.

Photopolymer plates are also something I've never worked with much before. Light hits the plate and hardens the polymer there, so to work with it you make a negative of the image you eventually want to print, much like photography. I painted my negative on wetwork acetate using cel medium, but you can also just invert an image in Photoshop and print it out on a transparency if you don't like having to think backwards.

The relief printed image is from an artjam I did with my pal Trent Call, and the digital bit is a photograph I took of downtown LA. The paper is this special washi that's coated to be used in inkjet printers from Hiromi Paper.

Person | Place | Thing

I have two sculptural pieces and two flat pieces in "Person, Place or Thing" curated by Todd Smith, Brandstater Gallery, La Sierra University, Riverside, CA. Opening reception is November 14th, 2011, 6-8pm.

Good Way

I'm so busy I think I may vomit from the stress, but, you know, in a good way.

Alternative Surfaces

^Bleach screenprint demo sample, made by me

I just got back from Salt Lake City. I was in town to teach a workshop at Saltgrass Press, Alternative Surfaces. It was a beginning level course, so I tried to keep most things pretty low-tech, and relied upon the unexpected nature of the materials: bleach, velvet, plastics.

^Screenprint on plastic by Stefanie Dykes, one of the founders of Saltgrass

^Monoprinted muslin form, made by a student

^Bleach stenciling on velvet

^Embossed and bleached velvet by student

^Embossed and bleached velvet by student

^Monoprinted muslin, a demo sample made by me

Danny

Steamroller Press, OTIS

I went with Tim Musso and a gaggle of his students from Riverside up to OTIS in LA for their Steamroller Press event featuring the oversized work of Sean Starwars. I ended up donated my hot pink print to OTIS (as I can't imagine owning something with that much hot pink) and Tim's print was such a success that multiple OTIS students traded him for a copy.

Print Vacation

While I move from Long Beach to Los Angeles, my wee press and screen equipment are all packed away, but once I've finished relocating I'll be back, posting prints and suchlike. In the meantime, I'm doing lots of sketches and small drawings, preparing for when I'm able to resume working on oversized things.

Commerce

Look, look! I have an etsy store with things that are too expensive for anyone that I know.  I have priced myself out of my social circle.  Good work, me.
(click on pictures to be taken to the magical land of commerce)

Xkot (pronounced "Scot")

My pal Xkot Toxsik in monoserigraphy! I haven't decided yet if I should title this "Xkot" or "Scot" but I think he'd be really annoyed if I used the "x"-free version.

JRC

Another monoserigraph, this one of my friend JRC.

Steph I & II

A portrait of my friend Stephanie Carrico in monoserigraphy.

I found out that I'd actually already done this portrait while moving out of my studio the week that I write this post(*sob!*):

And here it is while being worked on the screen: