Experiment: Oil Painting (Part IV)

The progression of a painting. I am not pleased with this one yet. It is roughly based on this image:

Experiment: Oil Painting (Part III)

The progress of a painting roughly based off of these photos:

Experiment: Oil Painting (Part II)

The progression of a painting, roughly based off of this image from my daily sky images:

 

 

Experiment: Oil Painting

I haven't posted a lot of my actual thesis work. That's because I've been mostly focusing on oil painting, and since I've technically only taken one class on the subject, much of what I've done this year I'm calling "learning experiences". I would rather not show these learning experiences to the public. For example, last quarter, I made a painting that was 4ft x 1.5ft. I decided to try my hand at stretching my own canvas. So I looked up instructions online (you can really find just about everything online!), bought a roll of unprimed canvas, gesso, and some pre-made wooden stretchers (the bars that make up the "frame" of the canvas).

4ft was about the tallest stretchers the store sold, and they only had two, so I had to buy both of  them. One of them was severely warped. But I made do; I tried to unwarp it with wet paper towels and heavy books. This seemed to be working, but it drifted back into place after I had assembled the canvas and had begun painting. So I was stuck with a warped painting that simply would not lat flat on the wall. I had to hang it in a thesis gallery show, and it was embarrassing. I did not take any photos of it.

Fortunately, I got instructions on how to build my canvases completely from scratch, stretchers and all. This quarter, I decided to go for broke and make four all at once.

The stretchers, made from 1x3s and quarter-round molding:

 Triangle corner pieces:

Here's where those triangles go:

Ready to nail together:

 The final product:
 

Only three of the four frames ended up useable; one of my long stretches ended up at least half an inch too short somehow, and though I tried to wrangle things into place, it was just a sad mess. I will get more supplies and make a new fourth frame sometime soon.

Experiment: Photography (Part II)

One of the studios I am currently taking is Intro to Film Photography. I was lucky enough to take a basic film photography back in high school, and it was a great experience, overall. I enjoyed it very much. However, I realize just how lucky I got in that class. While the art department's budget was tight and we had few supplies (and therefore students could not experiment), nearly everything was given to us: paper, chemicals, darkroom, film development canisters, etc. We only had to provide the camera (which everyone seemed to already own) and film (and we only shot about four rolls all quarter).

In college... let's just say that film photography is expensive. But it is also very rewarding. I think that I will feel very good about myself at the end of the quarter once I have somewhat mastered things. For now, it's a mixed bag. Some days go smoothly while others are a struggle. Of course, that's typical of any studio class!

Here is a contact sheet of one of my rolls of film and a few test prints I have done, as well as an example of test strips I made to determine how long to expose my photo paper to make a print.

Thesis

I am in my final year at school, and because of that, I am working on a thesis. (Thesis: it's a big deal.) I'm not ready to share the specifics of it yet, but the short of it is, my thesis is about the celebration of nature. Nature has always been a common subject in my work, and now I am exploring the theme behind it. I decided to stick with a single specific subject for the thesis, the sky

I have taken many photographs of the sky in the last couple years. Here are a few I've taken specifically for use in my thesis.

 

Experiment: Latch hook

As an artist, I often look at things I find it stores and say, "I could make that." Or I might say, "Oh that's so cool!" Or I might say, "That is sooo expensive!" You'd be surprised how often I say all three at once. So it goes without saying (but I will say it anyway) that I find myself drawn to crafts.

I found this awesome tutorial for a latch hook rug last month and decided to give it a try. I've been working on acquiring supplies and cutting fabric ever since. For my rug, I decided to use fabric scraps I already owned, rather than going out and buying mass t-shirts. I have lots of fabric I've been saving for no particular project and decided I might as well use it. I did a small latch hook project when I was younger, made of yarn, so I'm somewhat familiar with the process. It's one of those repetitive tasks that I enjoy for some reason.

The rug will be 37"x30" (the canvas is cut that size, at least; I will probably have to cutoff excess at the end). I am using whatever color fabric I have. So far, that's been a lot of red/pinks and green, with a bit of black and blue.

I went ahead and started the actual hooking process, even though I doubt I've cut enough fabric yet. It's slow going, but as I said, I enjoy it. I will continue to cut and latch and post my progress.

Experiment: Screen-printing (Part VI)

Long time, no see. Hell Week and Finals Week at school. But here's part of what I've been up to.

Part V showed you the stencils I made for my comic print. I managed to pick up contact paper (who knew that Contact was actually a brand name?) and remade all the stencils. They still did not want to print very well, but by doing two drops of color without lifting the screen, I managed to make them work. Here's what a test print of the blue, the first drop, looked like on newsprint.

And the newsprint with test prints of all four color drops. The bottom half of the black comic lines came out much thinned and fainter than I expected, which I was not pleased about. But again, with a double drop, they were acceptable.

Quick shots of the (basically) final prints. I'm picking up my graded portfolio from this class tomorrow, so proper scans will be up later in the week.

A second print was due at the same time as the above print, and I wanted the two to be related. I mentioned this in Part V as well. So as I printed the comic print, I slipped in smaller sheets of good paper where I knew ink would be coming through and I hadn't bothered to prevent (knowing I would be making these other prints). Each one has a drop of each color and most have a second drop of red. There was no registration, so they are all a little bit different. I burned the smaller comic transparency onto my screen and printed in on top of the color. Like the above print, I will scan them properly tomorrow and have them posted later this week.

Experiment: Screen-printing (Part V)

One thing I dislike about being in college for art is having to share studio space with other students. I won't get into the details, but let's just say I don't necessarily see eye to eye with certain other students regarding space and cleanliness.

But I digress.

Here's the image from Part IV, printed on a transparency, a large and small version. I've decided they will be they will become two different prints. The paper I tore into the sheets for the large prints left over pieces of paper conveniently sized perfectly for the small transparency. The large print will be an edition, and the small print will be... something a little freer, crazier, unplanned.We'll see.

I didn't get as far as I would have liked today, but here's a taste of what's to come.I'll be printing in yellow, red, and blue. Below, you can see the shapes of color I'll be using. The jagged shapes are for sound-effect bubbles. There will be a red one and a yellow one, on the same spot but slightly offset from each other. The bottom shape is the blue of Superman's suit, in the middle, the red, and on top, the yellow. There are a few more shapes unpictured, but these are the big ones.

The shapes shown below are cut out of cardstock to be used as stencils. However, one reason I didn't get very far today was because the cardstock failed me. I need to retreat to the store and pick up some contact paper instead. That should work out much more nicely.

Experiment: Screen-printing (Part IV)

A sketch of my new screen-print project. I wanted to try out the process you use to screen-print photos. I'm obviously not using a photo here, though. The process work with whatever image you want. You make it bitmap and print it on transparent film, coat your screen with a photo emulsion, expose your screen with the transparency on it, and wash away the coating. And there's your image on your screen, ready for printing!

The image I wanted to create is a comic book page that eventually crumbles and crashes at the bottom of the paper. There's no real reason behind this image, I just thought it looked interesting. I also wanted to bring together the worlds of comics and of screen-printing, for me. The image, as sketched, is black and white. However, over top and possible underneath as well, I will add in splashes of color, in the form of sound effect bubbles. There will be no text in the bubbles, just the shapes that dramatic sound effect bubbles have. Think old-time Batman.

Here's the final image that I have used with the photo process to put on my screen.

Experiment: Screen-printing (Part II)

Here's the sketch of the goddess figure to be featured in my screen-print. I was afraid to just start drawing blindly on my screen without really planning out which part you would see for each phase of the moon, how exactly it would look, all that. For drawing her on the screen, I used blue drawing fluid, which is a positive drawing technique (as opposed to crayons or stencils, which are negative and block the ink). I actually like how she turned out: a bit wilder and perhaps more primitive than the sketch.

Printing was wonderful this time around, full of happy accidents as opposed to being a comedy of errors like last time. I'm not finished with the prints (I have eight in progress), they still need one more drop of ink. If you look at the sketches in part I, you'll see it's the graphic black layer, which will also be created on the screen with blue drawing fluid.

One of the happy accidents: you can see the whole figure through the dark grey layer. I'm ok with that. I think it will work out well. Look at all my prints!

Experiment: Screen-printing

Screen-printing is a very interesting process. Before this year, the only printmaking I had done was relief (woodblock), which I loved. While similar, relief and screen-printing are different enough that I am excited to explore them further. For example, in relief, the bulk of your time is spent on carving your wood to create what is basically a stamp. Then you ink up, zip zip, and you're printing. For screen-printing, the physical act of printing takes the longest. This is because you usually do many layers. You're able to have much more flexibility with your prints, changing up the colors and design on the fly. Relief prints are often a single color, and doing multiple colors on the same print is difficult (maybe that's just me, being inexperienced in it). Screen-prints are almost expected to be at least three colors and are often many more.

Here's my sketch for my next screen-print. (I may or may not post pictures relating to my first group of prints. It was, shall we say, a learning experience.)

The first print was also of the sky, so I wanted to continue with that. I'm fascinated with the sky, even attempting to do a daily sky-photographing a while back (didn't end up panning out). The moon has always been an aspect of the sky I love. So this print will be the moon on a grey (probably not that shade) background, with black markings around the edges. Yes, they will be graphic and choppy as I have sketched them. There will be four variations, with the moon rising across the sky and growing from crescent to full. To mimic the markings on the real moon, there will be a faint picture of a goddess-like figure behind everything else. As the moon travels across the prints, it will reveal a little bit more of the figure, as I attempted to depict in the top-right corner.

The edges of the print will not be straight, flat edges. They will be jagged, rough, to correspond with the graphic mark-making of the black. The effect was achieved on the screen by using a pressure washer to take out the red block-out around the edges from a pre-existing composition. I'm excited to see if they will work as well as I imagine they will.

Moon goddess, eh? I guess Sailor Moon will never really stop influencing me.  (Although, in my defense, I liked the moon before I got into Sailor Moon, so there.)

Experiment: Grammar Gestapo (Part II)

Last week, I showed you the Grammar Gestapo herself, the protagonist of my comic of the same name. (I mentioned she was more of an antihero, although after reading this page, I am less convinced that "antihero" is the proper description of her. Since the whole comic is about language and grammar, I will need to look into this further.) Today I'll discuss her sidekick, the Comma Chameleon. Yes, that is the reference. He is a boy of 6-10, who has aspirations to be a novelist when he grows up. I'm not settled on his identity yet, but he is either the Grammar Gestapo's nephew or the younger brother of one of her students. Regardless, the Grammar Gestapo (out of costume) tutors him after school, and he became the Comma Chameleon on his own, possibly despite GG's protests.

I don't know what weapon he'll use yet, either. I want something to represent the chameleon tongue, but yoyos seem overdone. The other thought I had was one of those long sticky-hand toys, but I'm not sure how effect as a weapon it would be. Does it need to be? I suppose it could be a mere annoyance. More research is necessary.

He also represents the beginning of my attempts to incorporate more Western-style comic... um, style, into my work, rather than stay so slavishly devoted to the Eastern-style anime... style. I find him quite cute.

Experiment: Grammar Gestapo

Here's some sketches I've been working on for a future comic. It's called Grammar Gestapo, name for the main character. She is an English teacher who gets sick of all the poor use of the English language going on in the world and adopts a superhero identity to try and solve it. She ends up more of an antihero, though. She wields a tall red correction pen as her weapon. She uses it as a staff to fight with and, once she defeats her opponent, draws corrections on their faces.

And here she is out of costume.

She likes to wear eccentric hats, apparently. It may or may not have been an excuse to draw stupid hats.