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When you in the thrall of obsession. The first one is 3ply shina and you can see the dark inner wood. The next cut after this pix splintered the wood. The 2nd one I just started and it's all shina. The wood is shina through and is a big difference carving this one. That's a rubber thingee used to open bottles. It keeps the little pieces of wood from moving.
Annie Bissett - I feel a definite obsession bubbling close to the surface here and Annie may be feeding it. Annie is a woodblock arts and illustrator. I like her work very much. And her blog is a chronicle of her efforts to learn the Japanese style of carving. It's great when artists post pictures of their progress. You can learn so much that way.
And I discovered something else about carving. Carving wood is easier then carving rubber if you're carving good wood. That grab bag of wood I bought was a combo of good and not so good. I bought it from McClain's Printing Supplies. A great place. I read that shina is good for carving. The grab bag contained different varieties of shina. The first little woodcut was all shina. The one I did tonight was I think 3ply - the least good. It totally splintered. I guess it was a combination of not so good wood and total inexperience.
There was this little block of wood, just sitting there. I bought a grapbag of different sizes on line (very small). This one is 3"x2 1/2". I had intended to wait until we started woodcuts in class but it was just sitting there. So last night I painted a light ink wash on it and a little varnish which is supposed to make it less prone to splintering. So it was just sitting there as I got ready for bed and before I knew it I was cutting away. It's certainly not much but it's my very first woodcut.
And what did I discover? It's alot easier to cut then lino or rubber. And I'm going to buy some bigger blocks tomorrow. I'll cut the other side tomorrow and then bring everything to class on Thursday to print on the press. I'm hooked.
And here's the collagraph I did earlier.
It's the other hand. I'm a lefty.
I just finished a collagraph. It's for my relief printing class on Thurs afternoon. I had to finish tonight so it will be dry enough on Thurs. I did one last week in class and this week we're going to use the press. I have one more large rubber stamp left. I think I'll carve that one tomorrow and take in all the stamps so I can use printing ink instead of the stamp pads I've been using.
I don't know if her name is Ethel but she looks like an Ethel and she's a hedgehog and I love her. Little Ethel is over at Andrea's blog and Andrea is a new favorite. Her pencil drawings are to soooo adorable. Like Ethel.
5"x7", marker on paper.
There's a inkling that my cut obsession may be waining. They've become too easy to draw. The only way to learn to draw and get better is to draw something you can't or don't know how to draw. Here's Aya, 5"x7", watercolor on pencil.
And speaking of Aya - the pose is from Egon Schiele. And speaking of Egon - what artist would you want to be, whose skill would you want? DaVinci? Too much burden of greatness there. Michaelangelo? Too monumental. Rembrandt - colors too dark. Picasso? Not a very nice person really and I never understood cubism. VanGogh? I have enough self esteem issues to deal with. Nope, for me it's Egon (I know not the most unspoiled person) and has been since I started drawing a few years ago which is when I first saw his work on line. Only a happier Egon who lived to a ripe old age not the one who died at 28.
I have this fascination with line, and controlling it - that's why shading isn't really that important to me or anatomy either really or what I'm drawing. It just has to have really good convoluted lines in it. And odd color combinations. Egon's skin tones were filled with orange and rust and blue and gray, everything but a skin color. And I like how he took his figures out of the reality of the moment, without a background, without shading, with almost cartoon like faces, it becomes all about the line. I don't know if that's what it was for him, but it is for me. And OMG I'm missing the Oscars. I have to go now.
PS, I wasn't dismissing the greatness of those aforementioned artists, only trying for a Robin Williams history of dance sort of thing. And darn it but I missed the makeup artist awards.
Or a stack of sleepers though technically these guys aren't stacked, they're more a lean to. 5"x7", watercolor pencil on 110lb cardstock.
This one is from 2/21, I didn't have time to post it. It's oil pastels. It was very bright, but then I rubbed it with tissues and sprayed it with fixative and it came out darker which I kinda like.
In fond memory of Leo the most orangey of cats as he sleeps all curled up in Buddha's lap.
