A Different Spin 3
Over the course of the printing class I mentioned several times that "I'm working on this very labor-intensive 4-color lithography" but I have never actually shown it on the blog. The reason was that I'm still catching up making good photos of many pieces from the past few months, including this print.
It's called "A different spin 3" because it is part of a series. The first two prints in the series are linocuts from last year and I blogged about both of them: Different Spin, Different Spin II
This one is a 4-color lithograph and the principle is the same again: Print the same plate 4 times with a 90deg rotation, use transparent color. The principle is simple, but making a good print out of it is not. There is a lot of potential to just create a big chaotic mess, and this third one is actually pushing the limits, I fear, because it is very busy - especially with the colors I chose. That's also the reason why the last color was not another yellow or red (as originally planned) but a greenish gray, to tone the whole thing down. And that actually worked pretty well, I think.
I'm still undecided what the "right" orientation of the print is supposed to be. Currently I lean towards hanging it just as shown on the blog, with the gray at the bottom to "ground" the piece. But other orientations work well too. Feel free to leave comments on the blog with your own preferences and suggestions :)
My mom's home page
I just realized that I never put a pointer to my mom's home page into this blog. She is an artist as well so she definitely deserves a link from my blog and I just included her in my blog roll (on the right). Mom was a professional photographer all her life and now is into painting. Her site is here: http://www.wenzel-jelinek.at/Willkommen.html
Looking at the painting page I just realize how similar we are in some ways... I also have a whole stack of red-yellow themed pieces in my recent works :)
SJICA Monotype Marathon 2007
The ICA (San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art) has a fund raiser every year, called the Monotype Marathon. Last year I participated as artist, this year I decided to volunteer my time to help out and help other people print their monotypes. That even happened last weekend and I helped out at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto. You can read more about the Monotype Marathon here.
In addition to volunteering I also donated one of my own monotypes for the auction. I made it in a little private monotyping session I did last weekend, after tanking up on inspiration at the Pacific Art League ;) The monotypes, including the one I donated will be in the exhibition at the ICA from June 8 till June 23 and on the evening of June 23rd all the monotypes are in the fund-raiser auction.
So check out the exhibit and the auction. It will be fun!
By the way: the piece I donated is a so-called "ghost". Monotypes are one-of a kind prints where the artist - for instance - paints on a plate and then the plate is printed in a press. You can try to print the same plate a second time, but this print will be much weaker in intensity than the first one and generally look quite different. This second (or third) print is called a "ghost".
This particular print was an experiment because I actually printed the ghost on black paper. Ghosts may be so faint that the image might be almost non-existing when you print on black. Indeed this print is very very subtle, but it is also really interesting and unusual. That's why we chose it for the auction.
I hope you'll come by and check it out in person :)
Just for comparison, I also include the first print of that plate, printed on white paper. You can see just how different these two monotypes come out.
Wrinkle paint experiments
I'm fascinated by wrinkled paint...
If you look through my blog you'll soon find that I'm typically very deliberate in my process and typically I try to paint in a fashion that the resulting piece is "well crafted". I consider craftmanship an important part of my art-work. The means I typically try to use the best materials I can afford, and I try to not blatantly violate the rules of a good construction of your piece. Within limits, of course. For instance, if I went 100% this route, I would never paint on burlap. Actually, I wouldn't even paint on canvas, but only on panel. I do understand and accept that there are different approaches to making your artwork. Including art that is meant to not last (for instance a model of San Francisco, built out of jello comes to mind, or a sculpture made out of the artists coagulated blood that will simply fall apart if the power ever goes out). I totally see that as art too - it's just not the way I do most of my stuff.
So, why do I talk about this? I'm fascinated by wrinkled paint films. Now, a seriously wrinkled paint film is typically (always?) a signal that something went very wrong in the construction of the piece. It may be that the artist used super cheap materials. Or, in the case of oil paint, that a lower layer of paint was not dried before an additional layer was put on. Another possibility is that there was too much oil in the paint, or a bad medium was used. So there are a number of possibilities how this could happen.
The funny thing is: when I asked around how you deliberately make a wrinkled paint film, I heard all of these and other answers, all of them with "I think so" or "I believe I once heard that...", but nobody could tell me for sure how to make a wrinkled painting, because, after all, that's not what you want to achieve in your pieces, right? Also, I probably asked the wrong people because I asked mostly people who cared about well-crafted paintings and they wouldn't know. The other people who don't care sometimes end up with wrinkled pieces but probably haven't kept records of how a certain piece was created that developed wrinkles much later.
Clearly, it was time for some experiments. I knew that one sure way to create wrinkles is to put two layers on top of each other, when the lower layer is not dry. I did not want to go that route because that really makes for a non-sound painting. The other tip I got was that Joan Brown (Bay area figurative painter who often had paintings that are like an inch or more thick with really deep folds) used regular house paint and that she just laid it on really thick. Also I heard that too much oil in the paint can cause folds. From what I heard, Joan painted a) with very oily house paint, she b) probably added additional oil (stand oil?) to the paints. And c) because he paint films were super thick there was no way the lower parts of the painting could ever be fully dry before she painted over them.
The next piece of the puzzle was my recent painting class. I normally work with Gamblin Galkyd Lite medium but in this class I was introduced to painting with either just linseed oil or standoil as medium (+ turps). I had never worked that way so after the very first class I took a board and put on some paint with just linseed oil and stand oil. Mostly I wanted to see how long it would take to dry. (result: for-friggin-ever!). After almost a month that piece was still pretty wet. So I put it aside and almost forgot about it. Then, a week ago I found it again and believe it or not, it had developed some wrinkles. Mostly on the section that was done with stand oil! So it took somewhere between one and four months for these wrinkles to develop. I'm not that patient.
Obviously, it was time for more experiments and to bring in the heavy cavallery: cobalt dryer to speed things up a bit.
Next experiment.
a) oil paint with lots of linseed oil, to make it well over-oiled. That should wrinkle by itself
b) use stand oil instead but also too much
And becuase I don't want to wait a 1/4 year I added cobalt dryer to the oil. I used one of these clip on palette cups for medium. I filled it half with stand oil and added 2 drops of the dryer. For the linseed oil I used half a cup and added 3 drops.
Cobalt dryer has a relatively intense color and in this concentration it was noticeable that the paint film had a blueish tint. So that was probably way too much cobalt for this amount medium (there is another theory for wrinkles: use too much cobalt dryer ;) )
And the result: Believe it or not but after less than 24 hours the paint film had serious wrinkles. The paint was not dry, but it had developed a serious wrinkled skin, which now turned the piece into what I described above: a layer of paint on top of a not-dried painting. So I think I found the solution: too much oil on the one hand and too much cobalt dryer on the other.
The next experiments will be to reduce the amount of cobalt and figure out how much oil I really need to get this effect and still get the result without waiting for half a year or so.
For the record: The first two photos show the experiment with linseed oil + cobalt dryer. Because this paint was very runny, the wrinkles are less pronounced. But the fluidity of the paint caused some other interesting effects that need to be explored.
The last two photos show the piece done with stand oil + cobalt dryer. Those are more the kinds of wrinkles I am interested in.
My notes from the Lithography class
Lithography is a lot of work. I've said it many times on this blog. It's also a complicated, very process-oriented endeavour and till you have done it for years and years, you need cheat sheets and lists and any other type of help you can get your hands on. We had a cheat sheet with the absolute basics in the class, but I always felt that there should be more detail. So I started writing my own cheat sheet. But then I decided to go a step further and just type up all my really important notes from the class.
I realize this comes a bit late for this class, but at least we have it for the next time we print, right? Also, because those notes where a lot of work, I want to make sure other people can benefit from them too.
So here they are, in .pdf format. Please be aware that these are my private notes, not a text book on lithography. I asked the prof. to have a brief look through them and he didn't find any blatant problems, but those are still my private, inofficial, no warranty notes and NOT an official litho bible.
If you find the notes helpful I'd appreciate a nice comment on the blog, or just send me email. Of course large amounts of cash, checks, stock certificates, free movie tickets, coffee or art supplies won't be refused either ;)
Finally some space for drying paintings
Before I lose access to the woodworking shop at school I wanted build something I was dying to have for quite a while: a better way to store paintings that are drying. Especially when you do small scale experiments you quickly run out of shelf / table / floor space for these pieces. The solution is a drying rack. So after several hours fretting around with table saws, drill presses (for hand holes to move the thing - not visible in the photo), dado blades on the table saw and and and I ended up with this thing. Of course I had several goofups (notice the vertical dado cuts on the left, for instance? *blush*) But looks good enough and it works, and that's the most important aspect of it. And it's even built so you can take it apart fairly easily again.
Playing with texture
Now that CHI (a Human Computer Interaction Conference, which was good but took up 100% or more of my time last week) is over, I can finally return to art. First of all, here are a few photos of stuff I did the week before. I experimented a bit with texture, something I am very interested in (think of painting on burlap etc.).
This time I picked up an old trick to texture a painting surface that I learned from my mom: use tissue paper + acrylic binder (or acylic medium if you so choose) to create a textured surface. Let it dry and then paint on that. Another possibility is to use modeling pastes of which there are many different ones to be found in the art supply stores. I do prefer the texture you get from the tissue paper, though. Yet another possibility is to make your own modeling paste, using acrylic binder and marble dust. Or you can mix some sand into gesso. Or, or, or. Obviously, there are many possibilities.
So these two pieces here are made with the tissue paper trick (above) and both the marble dust in acrylic binder as well as light modeling paste in the lower one. I think both of these are not really finished yet, so I might post updates on them some time. Sorry that they are a bit out of focus...
Over the course of the printing class I mentioned several times that "I'm working on this very labor-intensive 4-color lithography" but I have never actually shown it on the blog. The reason was that I'm still catching up making good photos of many pieces from the past few months, including this print.
