SCREEN PRINTING

Hello friends!

Today I join you with a print I made last year in December. It's a SCREEN PRINT, which is essentially forcing ink through a stencil wrought onto mesh. Silk screen is a widely used method for creating highly replicable images that can be printed on a multitude of surfaces.

Let's break it down!

The method I used to transfer my images onto the screen is widely used by printmakers. The screen itself is coated with what is known as "photo emulsion", which is essentially a light sensitive paint that covers the whole screen.

In this process, screen printing is versatile in terms of creating an image. You simply create an image with opaque drawing or painting materials, such as india ink or even acrylic paint on clear or frosted mylar. Anything you can think of, as long as it is opaque can essentially be turned into a stencil on the screen, and in reference to the light-sensitive paint, here is how that works:

The image itself is placed onto an exposure unit (which might look like a giant scanner, or a tiny tanning bed to someone unfamiliar with them) and the screen goes on top of the image. The lid of the exposure unit is closed and a vacuum seal comes on while ultraviolet light bombards the screen. The key here is that the opaque drawing BLOCKS OUT the light in the gestures of the drawing itself, thus leaving the photo emulsion untouched by the rays of the light bed. Once the image is done "burning", you then move over to was the screen with water and like magic, the marks the image blocked out from the light dissolve in the photo emulsion, leaving you with a precision stencil of your drawing! It's really awesome to watch it happen and something you're thrilled to see when you do it correctly.

Once the screen is dry, you then may set up your station. Silk screen ink is a water based acrylic ink that dries quickly, so you must work fast. It is advisable to have all of your paper (or other materials) ready to be printed because it can go very quickly, but if you're lagging getting other things together while you're printing, the tinier marks of your stencil might dry up with ink and thus alter the gestures of your images. The ink is forced through the screen by use of a squeegee that is larger than the image itself. If you make more passes, the more opaque the print will be, but you also run risk for over-flooding the screen, and all of this takes some practice to get just right. But the results are awesome for any artist interested in making prints!

My image presented here was originally conceived as a diptych, but it ended up taking on a different life. Required to be only three layers for the project grade, I actually printed on this piece seven different times. I love mythology and the myth of Hades, the Greek god of the Underworld, and Persephone, the daughter of the Earth Goddess, Demeter, has always been one of my favorites. I love every myth about the underworld, such as Orpheus & Eurydice, and Thetis dipping her infant son, Achilles, in the river Styx...

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this story, Hades abducts Persephone and brings her the underworld and bequeaths that she can leave anytime she wants, so long as she doesn't touch anything or eat anything. While Persephone is in the underworld, she notices an irresistible pomegranate tree and was so tempted she forgot the rules Hades had set, and ate of its fruit. A beautiful young goddess herself, Hades was more than happy to take her as his prisoner and subsequently make Persephone his Queen. As the weeks and months went by, Demeter, the Earth goddess, begins to despair that her daughter is missing and when she finds out the nature of her imprisonment in the underworld, falls into a deep depression. The fair weather of earth deteriorates because of the Earth goddess's melancholy and is replaced with bitter cold and awful, unfruitful weather. Mortals pray to Zeus (the King of the gods) for his mercy and seeing his devotees and Demeter herself in such a predicament, he summons Hades to explain his underhanded actions. Rules are rules, and Hades is the ruler of the underworld, so his authority must be respected, however, Zeus strikes a deal out of pity for Persephone's poor mother and the people of the overworld. Persephone will spend half of the year in the underworld with Hades, and half of the year on Olympus with her mother. Thus, here on Earth we have the warm months of spring and summer when Persephone, the nymph of the seasons, is present and with her mother. And when she is with her husband in Hades, we have the colder months of autumn and winter.

Well, that's my interpretation of it anyway

My print features Hades and Persephone in their respective landscapes, with a central image of Persephone's initial descent into the underworld, never to be the same again.

Print is 22x30" on Rives BFK

Pulp Painting and Linoleum Blocks

Hello and thanks for reading my first update in a staggering 6 months! Much has happened to my portfolio since I last updated here and today I join you with PULP PAINTING and LINOLEUM BLOCK printing!!

Yes, as fate would have it last semester I enrolled in a course called "paper & print" where we made nearly 100% of all of the paper we printed on. This update features the 2nd project in a semester of three, combining the process of pulp painting and linoleum.

Papermaking is an art of its own. If I were writing blogs at the time I would have made sure to make an entry just to explain it in itself, but here is a quick overview -

Paper is made of processed fibers that have been beaten into "pulp." Yes, as the expression goes "Beat you into a pulp", it is in reference to reducing plant material (or otherwise) into a simple fibrous form. Once the material has been reduced to pulp it is ready to be made into sheets! The technical process of making paper is much aided by actually seeing it done will help you understand all the better! Please check out this informative "How it's made" episode featuring handmade paper! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbofx_YYaq0&playnext=1&list=PL0CCC1607CFD58360

So, getting into this two part process I first carved my linoleum block. Lino Cut is a form of relief printing (where the raised areas print) and it is a reductive process (which means the lines you cut "away" create negative space.) The size of this print is 16x20" and the theme we were given was "Visual Writing." As a play on the word "pulp" I made something inspired by "pulp" magazines of the early 20th century. I also thought of Roy Lichtenstein's conversational snippets in his work. When making this block I intended for the black and white image to stand alone as a solid piece of work, only to be enhanced by the colored PULP.

The image was also inspired by my brother, Andrew, whose co-workers actually said this to him. I got a good kick out of it when he put it up as his facebook status a number of months ago, and it stuck with me and eventually inspired a piece of work, and for that, I thank him.

If you watched the video above you might understand this next part where the PULP PAINTING comes in... Basically, the linoleum block had custom-made paper to be printed on. The sheets themselves are a mix of cotton and hemp fibers and once they were freshly made, they were pressed to 1000 PSI (pounds per square inch) to get some of the water out of the wet fibers.
Before you can begin painting with pulp, you must first make a stencil out of mylar (clear plastic) based on a proof (a test print) of your image. The mylar stencil will then be laid over the freshly pulled and damp carrier sheet and you can then move in with the colored pulp! The stencil is necessary to help control where you want your pulp to go (or the shield it from where you do not want it to go.) You have to be very exact when you make your stencil(s) based on the working proof!!

The pulp painting process is not unlike many water-based media we have all come to be familiar with. When you add lots of water the pulp becomes diluted and washier. You must also use two chemicals known as Methylcellulose (in other words, a pH neutral glue) and Formation Aid (another pulp additive) to get the pulp to behave like paint. If there is one thing I want you to walk away with having read this blog entry is that the colors on this image are NOT ink and are NOT paint, but paper itself embedded into the sheet, which is unlike anything else in my portfolio ever. It's pretty special and something I want to do more of!

Thanks for reading...!

COLOR PLATES

Hello friends

Here is something of a reiteration of my earlier posts regarding the etching prints I made for Spring Semester 2010. These are hand-colored prints that were brought to life with water color, colored pencil and crayon. Svannah Rhodes and Stacy were the only ones that would fit on my scanner bed, so I will not be joining you with the color plate of Bitumen, but hey I hope you enjoy reading anyway. Thanks for looking!!

Old DOODz

Dear Bloggers,


I'm writing to you tonight to regale you with some old doodles from sketchbooks past. You are about to see never-before-scanned images. I just went to the trouble of scanning these drawings from 2005-2008. These are generally uncomposed sketches/doodles that I hand picked for a retrospective slideshow for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Kryptonite Rita Bust

Hello there

Today I am presenting my final project from a sculpture class I took this past semester. We could do whatever we wanted so I used my favorite character as my muse for this sculpture.

This is actually made of red clay. I originally had a strange feeling at the onset of painting clay and I still have mixed feelings about exactly what is going on here, but still I am amused by the way this all turned out.

While I was making the crystalline mass that is Kryptonite Rita's scalp, my professor suggested I make a pedestal for her. So I then went to the pottery wheel and made a cylinder form quickly, and carried the crystal motif onto it.

Some of the inspirations for this piece were also the bust of Queen Nefertiti from New Kingdom Egypt and the Walt Disney animator's 3-D study for Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. Anyone who is interested in animation should watch the special features on the dvd, I'm telling you, it's incredible. The whole project eventually took on a life of its own of course, so now it mostly looks like a collector's bust of some kind that a sci fi geek would work all summer to buy. I wish.

But, once again, this piece isn't exactly perfect, as someone so tactfully as possible said during the final critique. But for me, this piece isn't about perfection. I think seeing a portrait bust of this character breathes new life into it regardless if it is extremely fine tuned. People in my class didn't seem to get the idea that she was a Super Villain and was supposed to have bold colors. It makes me think of her with natural colored flesh and it bugs me out ha ha ha. But, what do I know, I only created it.

My Painting Diary

Hello readers!

Today I write to tell you about a little project that began when I bought a nice little hard bound sketchbook at Jerry's one day. Every time I get a new sketchbook I always imagine a nice book with filled with full pages and dynamic sketches. Since I was painting a lot this semester I often found myself with surplus acrylic on my palettes and it was then I decided to take this nice little book and dedicate it as a Painting Diary.

Some of the key words I want you to remember when gazing into these "sketches" is that they are informal, abstracted and completely experimental. Other than consideration for focal points in these compositions they are largely unplanned and impromptu. I find that even when art is gracefully planned or intentionally designed seems to take on a life all its own unintentionally.

The techniques used to create these were various painterly mechanics... wet on wet, wet on dry, lots of use of the palette knife, multi media with pen and magic marker, colored pencil, crayons, water color... The key word, once again experimental. They are fun to make and without the investment of trying very hard on any single one they seem to come out interestingly enough piece to piece.

Some artists who also helped me decide to make this sort of experimental work are John Fogarty, Steve Streisguth and Paul Weingarten. Be sure to click on the images to garner the subtle details!

I hope you enjoy, thanks again for reading!

FREE DUMPY

Welcome back to my blog for yet another session of TMI. Today I join you with a propaganda poster I made for one of my classes. This poster features my best-known cartoon character, Dumpy Dolores. Let's see what elements are contributing to this piece, shall we?

A little background: last year in 2009 I was found out by the police after running a graffiti campaign of hand made sticker art. Although there were several characters that popped in and out of the rotation, Dumpy Dolores was by far the bread and butter of the campaign. So, a workweek's worth of court dates and $2,200+ later, Dumpy Dolores has fallen by the way side, especially in sticker form where she is most beloved by her fans.

So, for this assignment we had to make a propaganda poster. This is a cinch for me personally because I am a fan of poster art and fascinated by the concept of subversive text. The inspiration came from my own experiences with the law and my astonishment for being punished so harshly for something that really isn't malicious. In the spirit of political prisoners and favored celebrities under harsh treatment by foreign governments or their own governments, I created this poster.

Symbolically we were supposed to employ subject matter and use colors that contributed to the overall experience of the piece. For this I chose to use red to suggest anger and outrage, blue to suggest purity and truth, black to suggest desolation and gray to hint at sadness and sympathy. The subject matter shows Dumpy Dolores behind prison bars (which I am lucky to have not been put behind) within a brickwall with keyholes, suggesting some sort of imprisonment. The text on the arch says "VIGILANCE UBIQUITOUS" which is supposed to be a haunting slogan that reminds people to watch over her. I happen to love those words a lot.

The poster is on bristol board with magic marker, paint marker and water color.

One thing I always think about are the 42 stickers the Montclair police confiscated... presumably they are rotting away in some evidence locker or perhaps they were destroyed... Either way, Dumpy Dolores is making an agonizing crawl back to the sticker scene... eventually.

Thanks for reading!