On the Printing of Fish

I am a beautiful print and a delicious dish!

I have continued with my gyotaku experiments. This tilapia is probably my most successful attempt at making one of these prints to date. It’s pretty big at about 14 or 15 inches and the scales are really prominent. That has been a problem for me with the smaller fish like bluegills because the scales are so small that I have had trouble getting them to register as scales. This is only a problem with my technique as I have seen plenty of examples of other artists getting very fine scales to print beautifully. I’m getting better! 

I used water based relief printing ink on this one for a couple of reasons. Number one, it was done in-class and I wanted easy clean up. Number two, water based ink is very easy to dilute with water. I mixed a little Daniel Smith water based burt umber relief ink (which takes forEVER to dry) with some speedball water based black relief ink and went to town using a 1 inch flat brush to apply the ink. It all went very quickly, the ink was easy to apply and clean-up was a breeze. And that’s really saying something for any printmaking project.

There is a very large plecostaomus in my freezer right now that is begging to be printed. I tried to print it over the summer but failed miserably! I’m not sure why it was such a disaster, but I have a few guesses. First of all, I was using an oil based relief ink that was undiluted. It did not want to adhere to the fish at all and I think it was too thick – not juicy enough – to really get in between the scales. The scales are the other issue. The pleco has skin like sandpaper. Very, very coarse sandpaper. (In fact, I caught the fish with my bare hands in a little stream by my house. It was so rough that I had no difficulty just grabbing hold and dropping it in a bucket. A very large bucket.) I think these scales somehow repelled the ink; or maybe they held on to the ink. Whatever, the actual prints were terrible and even I, the man who keeps everything, threw them out in disgust. This was a shame since I had even set up the camera and was shooting a time-lapse video of inking and printing this monster. I deleted the movie because I was so disappointed with the prints. 

I think the success of the tilapia print has encouraged me to give the pleco another shot. Look for more gyotaku in the coming weeks!

Ha ha HA!

All this time you thought I was only working on my giant chicken linocut! But no! I was working on a clandestine print. It was all on the down low and very secretive. I needed some sort of a respite from all those ferns, so I switched it up to a different kind of leaf. Now, for the first time I reveal that I have been working on a linocut of sweet potato leaves!

This is an image of a common checkered skipper butterfly visiting some sweet potato blooms in my front yard. I was out tending to the ducks and chickens when I saw a few flowers on my sweet potatoes. They were a very lovely purple and white set against all the greens of the leaves. Add in a skipper butterfly and you have all the ingredients to a good linocut.

I actually made this piece for my wife who has long lamented that I don't make enough pictures with backgrounds. This is, of course, a matter of taste, but I can see her point and easily accommodate her wishes here. I enjoyed drawing and cutting this block and I look forward to watercoloring a few of them.

Look out for this print in my Etsy store in the next couple of days!

Here is the completed drawing on the block. I like a very finished drawing before I begin cutting.

After the drawing I put a very thin layer of ink over the image so I can get a clear sense of where I have already cut. 

This is the rather artfully posed block just before being readied for printing.

It needs a little cleaning up here and there, but I am well satisfied with this one.

Big Linocut Progress

It's been two weeks since I showed you my Big Linocut as I have it drawn on the block, so I thought I would give an update as to its progress so far. I made a couple of stop motion videos of my cutting process. It's a slow and tedious one – especially in the ferns.

This first video is a little choppy since I only took a picture every 5 or 10 seconds. I think it represents about a half an hour of cutting.

This one is better. I think it is smoother and it has some more fun animation aspects to it. Again, this is probably a half an hour of cutting (not including all the silly animations at the beginning).

So I have probably found five or six hours to carve on this block total. That's not a lot and as you can see, it's going to take me a while to get it cut!

White on Black

This project that we gave our high schoolers gave them all sorts of troubles! Most folks are used to thinking in terms of black on white - you draw a black line on a white paper and then add value if you want to give volume to the form. But this assignment was to draw white on black. The darkest value was already there; the student's job was to draw in the lights without drawing a bunch of white lines. This proved to be almost impossible as I saw a lot of white line skulls. Sheesh.

On another note, this is one more point in my don't-ever-throw-anything-away-ever column. The surface I am drawing on here is the remnants of a black mat. There's a stack of these sitting in the art room just waiting for some good drawings!

Prints in Need of Redemption

Very often prints of mine turn out pretty good. Sometimes, they are good prints that got marred somehow and sometimes they turn out to be... lacking. Whatever the case, I rarely throw them away. I keep them for experiments. 

There are a lot of my old prints that have been reworked like this. In fact, I made an entire drawing book - Concerning Religious Affections - out of failed woodcuts and etchings. They provided a wonderful texture and backdrop to the atmosphere of the entire book.

The following images were taken from the drawing books Concerning Religious Affections and Family Resemblances.

Woodcut with collage and gold leaf 

Left: Relief printed etching and linocuts with gold leaf
Right: Woodcut with collage and gold leaf

Left: A mess
Right: Woodcut with collage, gouache, and gold leaf

Taking Pictures, Making Pictures

Remember waaaayyyy, waaaayyyyy back when people used film? Back when you used to drop off your film and quiver with anticipation at what you would get back in a day or two? Or one hour if you were a big spender? Or how about this; you discover the holy grail of photography: the roll of forgotten and undeveloped film. The suspense was intense.

Not so much anymore. Everyone has a million pictures on his phone and photographs are largely throw-away things. Oh well, that's the way things go.

But what about those old photos? I used to keep almost all of them. Even the really bad ones because who knows? Maybe I'll think of a good use for them. These are all photo-collages that I made using old photographs.

Dream of the Advancing Minotaurs

For the Dream of Advancing Minotaurs, I used a picture of an old etching and pictures of my Dad and myself holding up a bull skull like we're a couple of minotaurs. By the way, that bull skull was one of the best Christmas presents I have ever gotten.

Matt and Amy

Both of these images are temptation scenes. That's about all I want to say about them.

Nimrod and His Father

The pictures on the left are of an etching and woodcut while the drawing of the snake on the right is a preparatory piece for a linocut. It so happens that I've always seen these images as part of a whole composition. I suppose the way I have reinforced that conception is by having the far left coil of the snake spill over slightly onto the preceding page. 

Anywho, if you have a bunch of old photographs, hang on to them. They may come in handy.

A Big ol' Linocut

I started work on a new linocut. It's another chicken and this time it's a cream legbar hen. They're funny looking birds with bouffant hairdos. At 12" square this will be my largest linocut to date*.

Day 1: At this point I have about an hour and a half in this drawing. 

 

Day 2: Here I have about another two and a half hours in the drawing. Give or take.

Day 3: I've really lost track, but I probably have another three and a half to four hours in the drawing.

Day 4: Aaannnnndddd finished.

And that's it. It took maybe nine or ten hours to draw this chicken among the ferns. Many people can draw faster than me, I'm sure. But from here, I have many hours of being hunched over the block to look forward to! I actually do look forward to it. It's cliche, I know, but it is contemplative to spend such a long time at such a simple task. If I refrain from listening to music (which I don't always do) I have nothing to do but think as I work.

I don't know how long it will take to cut this block, but I'll get another post ready to go as soon as the proofs are ready to show.

*I have worked on one other linocut this size with my friend, Ned Bustard, but it was a half and half type deal.

Cutting Linoleum - The Aftermath

Isn't that a better title than "Cutting Linoleum part 2"? It sounds so ominous. It sounds like all of my predictions of perfection were ill founded and destined for failure. Well, happily that is not the case. I pulled five proofs (a "proof" is sort of like a test run for prints) and I was very happy with them all!

I was unable to wait until I had a proper block of time to print, so I hastily spread out my stuff in between classes today. I like to print my linocuts by hand if I'm only doing a few. For a larger edition, I will break out the press. In the picture below the ink and brayer (roller) are pretty self-explanatory, as is the inked block. But what is that brown disk just to the top right of the block? That is called a barren and it's a small disk that is covered with a bamboo leaf. The barren is what you use to rub the back of the paper when it is placed on the block. (Alternately, I have an old wooden spoon that has been worn to perfection over many years of use.)

My ad hoc print station

I printed on two kinds of paper. The first proof was pulled on one of those handmade Thai papers that has little bits of plant matter imbedded in the fibers (the smallest of the five proofs above). It turned out nice, but I wanted to try a different paper. Kitakata paper is a thin, silky Japanese paper that is great for relief printmaking and the remaining four proofs are printed on this paper.

The human gaze is met with a nonplussed poultry stare.

This is the resulting print. I love the lines in linocuts. They are different from drawings, I would say they are more unrefined, but that is not really true. Each of the lines in a linocut has been cut once on the left, once on the right and then further trimmed by the blade until it is just right. So if anything, the lines in a linocut are far more refined than those in a drawing. But they still retain a naive quality that drawings do not necessarily possess. Whatever the case, I really, really like them.

I am very happy with this print and will pull an edition of it in the next week or two. The edition will be limited to 25 numbered prints on Kitakata paper. In addition to this there will be 5 prints hand colored using watercolor. The prints measure 6.25" x 4". Since you are obviously dying to get your hands on one, you may purchase these prints at my Etsy shop here.

Cutting Linoleum

If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me to explain the process of making a linocut... I'd have a nickel. So I'll just assume you are shy and didn't want to seem unlearned in the ways of printmaking by asking too many questions about the relief process. That's okay, I understand. In my magnanimity, I will answer the questions you didn't know you needed to ask.

The first thing I do when making a linocut is make a drawing. That may seem like a dumb thing to say, but it is by no means a given. A lot of folks just go to work on the block and see what happens in the process. Not me; I like a nice, precise drawing done ahead of time. I'm about split evenly between drawing it directly on the block and drawing it on paper first and then transferring it to the block.

Yes, I am a beautiful rooster. You may proceed with freeing me from the block.

Now that my drawing is done I'm ready to start cutting. These are the tools I typically use:

I am used to using those Speedball cutters that you used in high school. But as I was searching through the drawers here in the art room I came across the cutters pictured above. These make the Speedball cutters look like butter knives. These little blades are sharp and make some very accurate, fine line cuts. They are also very comfortable in my hand and are easy to guide.

What a lot of people don't realize is that you move the block around as much as you move your cutting hand. A lot of the time, my hand that holds the cutting tool is stationary while I move, twist and turn the block around to get the delicate lines cut. It may be counterintuitive but it really works. Take my word for it, this is the kind of invaluable information that you are paying the big bucks to read. Ahem.

It looks deceptively finished; but it really needs hours of more back breaking, shoulder-cramping work.

I like to put a very thin layer of ink on the block after I have finished drawing it. This provides a nice contrast between the surface and the areas I have already cut. When putting this layer on it is important not to ink it too heavily so you can still see your image.

And here's the image after all those hours of work:

I will print this block in the morning. Let me say that I have never, ever, ever, never cut the block perfectly on the first go-round. Many times I have cut a block, looked on with smug satisfaction and thought to myself that THIS is the time that I will have done it perfectly. There will be no touch-ups necessary this time. My skills are complete; the student has become the master. But I always have to go back and thin out some lines here, clarify some areas there. And so on. But this time, this time I have taken my time, cut with precision and I feel confident in my heart that I will pull a proof in the morning and everything will be perfect. This time.

Stay tuned to see if I am right.

Tattoos

So you want to be an artist. If that is so, you'll have to come to terms with the fact that sooner or later, you will be asked to design a tattoo. Family and friends will never be so appreciative of your work as they are when they want a nice original artwork to emblazon their upper arm or inner upper arm or hip or thigh or back or neck (yikes!) or foot or whatever.

I have done four tattoo designs over the years of which one of them has ended up on the person I designed it for. (If you ever see a mushroom/soccer ball mash up on a woman's hip, you'll know my work!) What follows are the designs I did for my nephew. He called me up saying he wanted an anchor design. Maybe with a mermaid. Or something. Here's the mermaid:

Would you care for a beautiful mermaid on your forehead?

He realized he wasn't keen on the mermaid (and I don't think his girlfriend at the time was, either). So we moved on. Now, I like me some ancient Christian symbolism. And boy-o is the anchor an ancient symbol for Christ our hope (spes is Latin for hope). The thought is that Christ is our anchor and we will not be moved or led astray and washed out to sea. And also a dolphin is often associated with this anchor. But not always. Since we live in Florida, I thought a dolphin would be a nice, local touch.

The austere, black and white dolphin of hope appeals to your intellect.

Of course, my dolphin is more the medieval-type dolphin that has scales, frilly fins, a serpentine body and a nice, toothy grin. It's not so scientifically accurate, but it is fun to look at.

Deluxe edition in luxurious color.

And here is the actual tattoo my nephew ended up with:

Similar to my drawings, but sans dolphin or mermaid. Nice!