Great Student Work!

Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club Holiday Workshop

Here's a recipe for the perfect way to ring in the holidays....spending time making art with a group of great kids. Together with my two daughters, Carolie and Jenna, we spent a total of 6 hours over three days doing a volunteer workshop at the brand new Ranier Vista Boys and Girls Club. What a wonderful experience, although I certainly couldn't have done it alone. The art studio at the Rainier Vista club is nothing short of amazing and the kids had great success in drawing, carving, inking and printing, and decorating their own holiday cards to take home to family and friends. I was particularly amazed by one lovely young lady who managed to sail through the entire process without getting so much as a smudge on her beautiful pink dress. On the other hand, I was pretty much covered with smudges, smears and streaks - just my usual look in the studio. Anyway, a good time was had by all and we hope to do it again next year.

Adventures in Printmaking

Above are a few of the results of my recent ventures back into the world of printmaking. These collagraphs were a real treat to create from the initial concept and planning to the finished prints. The smaller of the two was inked in two colors and the red areas are chin colle. The finished print was hand colored in a few spots with watercolor. (A simpler version of this plate can be seen in a previous post.)
The larger print was also hand colored with watercolor.
I
Does anyone have any tips or tricks for speeding up the inking and wiping process? As much as I love collagraph, my full time day job does not leave me much time for this very time consuming process. Compared to this, printing linocuts is a snap.

Drawing with glasses and without: which is which?

So far so good...8 days into the New Year and my resolution is holding up. Each day I've spent 15 minutes drawing. Losing my glasses one day resulted in an interesting drawing experiment. Instead of wasting another 15 minutes looking for them I decided to do my drawing without glasses. The drawing of the rose above is the result. (The drawing of the bear is an example of drawing with my glasses.) Not being able to see details forced me to sort of "feel my way around" the drawing process, producing more fluid, intuitive lines and punching up values.

A New Year's Resolution: Draw Everyday

What a noble goal. Can I do it? I've decided to approach it in small steps.
My goal for the first month is to draw for 15 minutes each day. If I can
stick to it, I'm going to try for 15 minutes twice a day for the next
month. Just draw anything with no fussing, no perfect results....I just
want to establishing a habit of making marks on a regular basis with no set
expectations.
Ok, here goes...

snow removal via backhoe, Beacon Hill style...

Jack Frost is eating us alive in Seattle!

Although I should be used to this, having grown up in The Windy City, almost 35 years in Seattle has turned me into an official Pacific Northwest weather-wimp. But really, this weather is pretty tough even by Chicago standards. And then there's the hills here...Wow!

Thursday morning we all awoke at 5am to an incredible explosion- the house frame shook and many folks up on Beacon Hill thought that it was a plane crash or a terrorist blast. It was Thundersnow - that's a first for me. The weatherman says to expect more tonight plus up to 70mph winds. Hope we're still here tomorrow to complain some more.

The Paper Place Contest

http://www.thepaperplace.ca/samplegiveaway.html

The Paper Place has put together the ultimate Chiyogami sample pack, 637 patterns in total, (retail value $1911.00). 

I could look at this stuff for days!

Burnt Plate Collagraph

Experimenting with Collagraphs

The collagraph print above is one of the first of a few experiments that I'm having fun with this winter. The plate is very simple, a shallow, sanded rectangle of pvc sentra. The darkest lines and dots are the result of burning into the plate with a woodburning tool. The other textures are modeling paste painted on with a brush and/or sponge pressed into the paste. Those deep burnt lines create a lot of burr and hold a lot of ink. Not a bad first print...stay tuned for more experiments and the addition of some color. Only one negative, it's about 4x harder to ink up intaglio than it is block prints, 

and a whole lot messier.

"Conundrum", Colored Pencil with Brulage, 16 X20 inches

Burn, Baby, Burn!

It's 6 pm on a lovely evening in late fall and my 19 year old daughter Jenna bursts into the kitchen in characteristic high drama, "Something's burning! Mom!? Do you smell that? Somethings on fire!!! And so it is. It's my lovely colored pencil drawing that I've just spent the last month or so working on. I'm sitting in my studio bent over my work with a small wood burning tool. As I carefully singe the drawing perimeter, occasionally stamping out small areas that burn too fast, ash is flying thither and yon. If Jenna thinks I'm crazy, my kindhearted girl keeps it to herself, accepts my explanation and moves back into the safety of the world outside my studio door.  

What has brought me to this? It started a couple of years ago while I was working on a large colored pencil/collage project for a restaurant  in Alaska. The piece included several small vignette drawings mounted on a larger drawing of Mt. McKinley. I wanted something to give the piece a rugged, antiqued look and suddenly that old image from Bonanza popped into my head - remember the burning map accompanied by the theme music? Remember Hoss and Little Joe? Remember Dinah Shore singing "See the USA in your Chevrolet"?

Anyway, back to my project. Inspired by the Bonanza map, I got out my handy little wood burning tool and set to work. I liked the effect I got on the Canson mi tientes paper. Since then, I've used this burning (brulage) technique on many of my block prints and several colored pencil pieces as well. 

The piece above, "Conundrum", is a good example, as well as being one of my favorite recent pieces. In this piece, colored pencil was applied in gentle vertical strokes on Lama Li paper. As the paper is quite fragile, I had to be very careful to limit the number of colors that I layered. Too much and the paper would tear. Once the colored pencil application was complete, I sprayed the surface with workable matte fixative and set to work burning the edges. I have tried many different type of papers and the Lami Li burns the best. Occasionally the "burn" takes off in a glowing creep. I usually let it go a bit to see what kind of interesting shapes evolve and then quickly stamp it out when I feel it's run it's course. (It's important to keep a small fan or a breeze from an open window going, to keep from inhaling the smoke.) Also, very important to occasionally blow the accumulating ash off of the paper and the work surface. Once I'm satisfied with the results, I turn the piece over on a clean sheet of newsprint and carefully tap and brush the loose ash off. The finished piece is then sprayed with acid free adhesive, applied to mat board and pressed under weights overnight.  

It's not a quick and easy procedure but I really do love the effect it gives and it works especially well with small block prints. Actually, if truth be told, I love the process as well. The act of painstakingly destroying a portion of something I've just created is quite satisfying. I wonder what a psychotherapist would have to say about that? Well, that's my burnt paper story and I'm stickin' to it.

"Sisters", Colored Pencil, 23 X29 inches