Pathfinding Project (slide show)

preliminary sketches and initial paintings




a lot more to be done with this project during the rest of the spring and summer.......

Water Based Etching

with photopolymer plates
8.25" x 11.5"

this first plate, line drawing, will stay black
but I'm not sure if it goes down first, or after the second plate is printed


this will be some kind of blue or green


this one will be on top of it all, in white

Mistakes in Practice

" There are several poor ways of practice that you should understand. Usually when you practice..., you become very idealistic, and you set up an ideal or goal which you strive to attain and fulfill. But as I have often said, this is absurd. When you are idealistic, you have some gaining idea within yourself; by the time you attain your ideal or goal, your gaining idea will create another ideal. So as long as your practice is based on a gaining idea, and you practice... in an idealistic way, you will have no time actually to attain your ideal. Moreover, you will be sacrificing the meat of your practice. Because your attainment is always ahead, you will always be sacrificing yourself now for some ideal in the future. You end up with nothing. But even worse tha this idealistic attitude is to practice... in competition with someone else. This is a poor, shabby kind of practice."

pg. 77-78 of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki
published by Shambhala Publications Inc.
ISBN 13: 978-1-59030-267-5

Living and Aesthetic Life

beyond just thinking about aesthetics in an abstract, apart-from-self, different-than-daily-phenomenon type of way?

http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/9781904303992-sample.pdf

I know some who wrestle directly with this question and arrive at a conclusion that makes them put down their paints, abandon the studio for some kind of other living, but they still have an art school mentality and a drive to create a performance; something fake and outside their lives. They changed the medium, but not their attitude.

http://www.personal.kent.edu/~jwattles/TBG.htm

I am certainly not pushing for the abandonment of any particular medium.
What I am wondering, however, is if more aspects of life can be lived artistically, aesthetically, differently, with a fuller meaning.
(and if those parts can be accepted AS art themselves, even if they cannot be dissected and studied as art normally is, or even documented)

a portrait

this will be on display on April 23rd at the Brooklyn Art Library,
and will be included in a book that documents a self portrait project.

It is wood, with acrylic paint.
8" x 10" x 1"

(click images to make them bigger)

Solarplate Etching

technically, the plates I used are KM photopolymer plates
http://www.takachpress.com/access/tyobo.htm
the solarplate brand is also available from Takach Press
I'll have to try those as well



Encouraged by good results on Monday night, I went back to the exposure unit and made four plates.
The top one is inked with Charbonnel Etching Concentrated Blue. The range in the plate is good. I think I will change the color since this is the first plate to be printed, and with be the background. (probably some kind of green) I also will experiment with a couple of different off-white and ochre papers.



I decided to test the rest of the plates with black, to make sure I would get the saturation I wanted in a color plate. Testing with black ink on white paper makes judging value very easy. And, if the color is not working out later, at least I know its an ink problem and not a plate problem.
This one will be some kind of lighter blue, and fairly transparent.



This is the main image. It will remain black. No matter how subtle I can get the aquatint, I still have a preference for some kind of strong-handed graphic-looking image in the picture.
Technically, this is still an aquatint style plate. That just allows any width line that I want. I am pleasantly surprised by the variety of line I can get, from super delicate, almost disappearing, to very bold.



This last plate is going to be the top layer of ink. It will be a transparent white. (the black part will be white, so you have to image this image in reverse)
Since everything underneath will be a dark or middle value, (and the paper is not white) I'm curious how transparent the white will have to be. Much of the underlying image may already show through with very little transparent base mixed into the white.

Photo Polymer Gravure

I've been looking to try this process for a couple of years and tonight a few of us got the process to a semi-predictable work flow with the equipment available at school.

Here is a nice quick blog post from someone else discovering this technique
http://suzannerevy.blogspot.com/2009/01/photo-polymer-gravure.html

I'm excited to do more and will post the results when I have an image beyond the first few test images we made tonight.