On the Wall

Since it is officially the Peace On Earth season what could be more fitting than to put the Peace in Print up on the wall?  So, here it is on the wall at North Bank Gallery in Vancouver, WA, in time for the First Friday Art Walk.  Let me tell you, one has to be a bit of a contortionist to get this baby on that wall.  Fortunately, there were enough people passing through while I was attempting this that they could hand me the hammer, or hold this end for a minute -- and they were all willing to help, lucky for me!

I have a better table for the book and will take that in tomorrow and get it all set up right and proper like.

 

It will probably end up under the sign and poster and the small print bin will move someplace else.

Another view.  I'm betting we will have a ton of people go through and it will be fun to hear the comments!  If I can remember I will take photos tomorrow night --

To all who were participants in the Puzzle Project - here's another line on your resumé - North Bank Gallery 1005 Main St., Vancouver, WA.

Happy Holiday!

Here are those kids again!  They seem to have moved into my imagination and plan to stay there.
This is one of those times when I really need your input, if you would please.  What do you think of this direction?  Is it silly, simplistic, fun, funny, has possibilities, or junk this stupid idea right now.

The Giant's garden: Christmas Morning is the latest in this series:

The kids all seem to be pretty happy with what they've found - the puppy has yet to open her gift and is a little anxious about the whole affair.  The frog just watches.  And I'm wondering if I should be making these as woodblock prints, or doing them at all.

I'll be eagerly awaiting your ideas and comments and if they are not pats on the back, but more like pats on the head, I promise not to send the Art Exterminators after you --  ;-)

Ponies as art?

I confess:  I really do not know what is art and what isn't anymore.  All I know is that my gallery has called for Toy related images for Dec.  It is a group show and the entire downtown is going to be toy themed.  Ugh.  I don't do toys.  Or do I?  For the year of the horse last year I did a little ride about pony that my granddaughters both dearly loved.  They rode that pony until I think it's little red wheels were down to the hubs.  As usual, I had printed way more cards than I needed for the Horse Year, so I took one of the left-overs and whacked off the 2014, added an eyeball and a different ribbon, and voila! We have art.  I think.  What I do know for sure is that it is a toy. Of course, I didn't think of taking photos until it was already in the frame, so I apologize for the reflections.

All dressed up in a frame, he-she-it is looking pretty fancy.

Where did this come from?

Surprise!  I know -- it has been many moons since I've sat down to actually do a blog entry (as opposed to thinking about doing a blog entry).  Last winter I broke my shoulder, actually gumming up the rotator cuff, and causing it to scream some of the most obscene obscenities.  The result has been the better part of a year with no production.  The first quarter of the year I was stumbling around with a blank mind -- absolutely nothing going on up there. The skull functioned purely as a place to stick my face and place a gob of hair on it.

Finally, at some point in the Spring, the urge to sketch and think about getting back to work happened. Maybe it was Maria's Peace Puzzle piece arriving and needing to have something drawn and carved, or maybe it was the longer days and more sunlight.  Maybe I was suffering from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Whatever it was I started sketching every evening while propped in front of the TV.  Mostly it was Zentangle type things, but then children started entering the scene.  I have no idea where they came from, but more and more of them kept appearing.

 And then, the strangest thing of all happened, they started interfacing with the medallion/mandala drawings and the next thing I knew there were children playing in the Giant's Garden.

One of the galleries where I show my work has a Salon group which meets once a month and anyone having any questions, or just wanting to socialize, can bring a work needing a critique.  So, one Sunday I took my sketchbook and asked the group what they thought of my kids.  Maybe they were just being kind to an older person with her arm in a sling, but they all encouraged me to go on and see what I could do with them.  And this is what came of that.

Many more sketches ensued and finally I got up enough gumption to actually place one of the kids on a Solarplate and make an intaglio print.  And so here we have the result of that action:

It is actually on BFK and considerably lighter and more black and white than this, but you get the idea; fairly boring and not all that much fun. Mostly a gabble of lines and confusion.  So, we add a little color.  Considering the cost of plates and making one for each color, more or less, I opted for hand color.  What I didn't consider when making that decision was that it would have to be done with a brush with three hairs and would take all day.  Other than that everything was perfect.  Here's the result of one day of coloring, more or less:

The Giant's Garden:  Tea Time

6" x 8"

It will be a very small edition - depending on how long I am willing to sit and color!  Many activities have been taking place in the Garden.  The Giant must be a very gentle and generous being, but it has told the kids that they can play as much as they want.  And, they will! And, they are!

Yet More Superb Starling and The Hunt For Iridescence

You're probably thinking that I'm beating this poor old Starling print to death, but I wanted to share a few new things I learned on the way to finally getting an iridescent Superb Starling.  I had tried everything from soup to nuts including several different inks, mixing mica with the ink, mixing gold powder in the ink, chine colléing (is that a verb?) several different papers, and finally cutting a stencil and applying the mica on top of the wet Akua ink.  Bologna! Nothing achieved the effect I wanted or came close to the bird I was trying to replicate.  And then - whoopee!  I discovered this wonderful paper at a local art store - it is --- IRIDESCENT!!  Wowie - I could hardly wait to try it.

It is listed as Purple Somethingorother, and it can be solid purple until you move and then this luscious limey green appears, and some turquoise and some gold, or wait maybe that's pink.  It is amazing.  The red paper under it is regular red mulberry.  Well, I got right to work cutting out little bird bodies and red breasts.  And then I tried to print.  Surprise!  Ink printed everywhere, but none on the bird body.  This wonderful paper would not accept ink!  What the ...? 

Phooey, (or similar exclamation) as we seasoned printmakers like to say at times like these.  I gave up on that process for the moment.  On the same day that I bought the problem paper I also bought some plain white lacy papers with the intent of exposing them onto solar plates and using them as background texture.  The first exposure went as usual: nothing on the plate.  Not to be discouraged I inked some of the paper with black ink, exposed again and voila!  Perfect.  So, that is what I used for the background on this Starling print. 

Now back to the reason for the Phooey (it's a technical term) statement.  I put the Akua inks away and went back to the old standby: Gamblin Artist Colors Portland Black.  Same result - ink everywhere but on the iridescent wonderful glorious paper which is now causing me to become mildly irate.  Back on to the shelf it went and down came the Litho Roll Up ink - the muscle bound, body builder of inks. Yes!  A little difficult to maneuver, a bugger to wipe, but it prints beautifully on my wonderful heart fulfilling purply-green-turquoise, gold, pinkey paper.  Yaha!  We have success, Houston!  Not the best photo - ignore the shadow in the lower corner -

It is still difficult to see the iridescent quality in a photo - maybe you just have to take my word for it or maybe it will be more evident if you click on it and see it larger.  Or, maybe this little close-up will help  (there's darned shadow again, darn it) -

Yeah, I think you can see the sparkle in his coat in this close up.  The detail of the background from the lacy paper shows up, too.

So, those are my recent successes, you really don't want to see all the failures that transpired during the trip to the final printing of the Superb Starling.  I'm confident that all the East Africans from Kenya and Tanzania will approve of my take on their resident bird.

My apologies to all my woodblock buddies - this is not a woodblock, but it could have been!  And, maybe my struggles with the ink and chine collé will help you someday - maybe - could happen -
forgive??

FOUR!

There has been little or no printmaking taking place around here while waiting for a broken shoulder to mend.  The break was in mid-December, so we are pretty much healed and ready for rehab. Physical therapy (aka Extreme Interrogations of muscles and ligaments beyond what any human is expected to endure) starts this week.  I am such the wimp.

Meanwhile, however, while sitting around waiting for healing to occur I discovered The Pi Project which is a collaboration put together by local Vancouver (WA, not Canada) fiber/textile artist Sally Sellers.  Sally was clever enough to notice that March 3 of this year will be 3/14/15, the first digits of pi = 3.1415 ad infinitum, so she asked artists from all over the planet to make 9.5" square flags with any number from 1 - 0.  There was a great article on the project in our local paper, The Columbian , which explains it all.

Being temporarily one armed this was right up my alley and provided several evenings worth of entertainment.  First came Four:

And then came 0:

 

The ouroboros seemed to me to be the perfect representative for 0 -  you can't get much more circular than when you consume your own tail.  

Next on the agenda is a return to printmaking - first comes the sketch and then the decision: should it be woodblock or should it be etching?  Guess I should do the sketch first....

Startled Starling

When we left off we had two transparencies ready to expose.  We exposed and then had: 2  exposed plates which I'm sure I photographed, but can't find and so we're moving to the next bit.

First, the background plate was inked.  It may be hard to determine in this photo, but the dots are an aqua blue with a lime green surface roll.

Two stencils were cut, one with the bird, and the bird.  (Sorry, I forgot to rotate this one -)

 The one without the bird was placed on the inked background plate

And, then the one with the bird was inserted and the one without was removed leaving the bird stencil in place.  Now we're ready to print this plate leaving a white space for the bird.

A little ink has come through in the white space, but it won't matter since it will be covered by the bird.

Next, we ink the bird plate

And cut out the two chine collé pieces from very thin Japanese papers: (oops, forgot to rotate again!)

And, after applying glue to the wrong side of the papers, but placing glue side up, they are placed on the plate in the proper place where they will stay if they know what's good for them.

This is placed on the press bed in the registration jig aka blue masking tape:

And, the print paper with the background lowered into place, run through the press and voila!

We have a Superb Starling. 

Superb Starlings are all over Tanzania - like Seagulls at the beach.  Every rest stop is well populated as they scrounge for tidbits of dropped or discarded food.  But, they are gorgeous.  They are much more iridescent.  I was unable to get any combo of ink with gold powder, or mica, to achieve the desired effect, but maybe I can find a paper which will do the trick on my next trip to Portland.

A Little of Everything

If a person were to judge the activity here from the number of posts it would appear that most of the time there is absolute quiet.  However, even though we don't make much noise, several things have been on-going.  Firstly, there is the LaPierre Lane sign.  About 2, maybe 3, years ago hubby brought this poor bedraggled worn and soggy wooden sign in and asked if I could re-hab it.  Oh sure, I answered with fake confidence, and quickly stuck the thing under the press and forgot about it.  Maybe 6 months later I got it out and sanded it a bit.  At that point I began to realize just how much work was going to be involved and quickly stuck it back in its temporary home, under the press.  Now the several years passed and it accidentally surfaced again.  I decided it would make the perfect birthday gift for the guy who has everything, including me.  So, I set to work - and honestly, I wish I had a before picture because the transformation has been shocking, to say the least.  It involved a lot more sanding, which was infinitely easier to do once it had r-e-a-l-l-y dried.  And, then the fun began: first with the oil-based exterior primer where ever paint was going.  Then the staining for the background, followed by 3 coats of exterior latex paint (dark brown edge and back) and raw sienna (they call it cedar) for the lettering and last, but not least, 3 coats of Spar Varnish over the part that was stained.  The last of the varnish went on today, so it should be good and dry by next Wed., which is the Lucky Guy's 80th birthday. Unfortunately, he will not be surprised because he walked right by this thing half a dozen times and didn't notice it and then on the 7th time he saw it.  I should have known that my luck was not going to hold out indefinitely.

The origin of the sign is unknown.  It was something that the younger brother, Len, had at his house in Salmon Creek, Idaho.  When Len died his widow gave it to Mr. Lucky and he brought it home.  So, we don't know whose handiwork it is, nor do we know its age.  All we know is that now it is looking good and will hopefully last way past us.

Meanwhile, the other day I got the ladder out, moved a bunch of furniture and other stuff around, and hung the Puzzle Print "City of The World".  It consists of five 22" x 30" sheets, or a total of 30" x 110".  I don't know if there's any significance that the road in the middle heads off down to the bathroom door, but I choose to think that there just might be...

And, here is where the nonsense ends and the, more or less, serious work begins.  Below are two (you probably will have to take my word for this, two pieces of acetate with black ink.  The one on the left will be the background and the one on the right will be a Superb Starling (the ornithologist name for him, not mine - if I had my way he would not be in the Starling family -).  These will be exposed onto the solar plates  as soon as I get back to the studio.  And, then we will see if we can get a decent print to develop.  Or, it may end up a woodblock - but since this has a deadline and the holidays are nipping at my heels, I'm hoping to knock out a quick little intaglio. 

The Fantastic Fantastic Garden

Somehow time has flown by and I am just getting around to hanging the Fantastic Garden print.  I'm sure that I will enjoy it much more now that it is out of the drawers and up on the wall.  Hanging was not an easy project and definitely not for the faint of heart, or those of us who have our qualms about teetering on step stools on top of cabinets leaning precariously over exposure units thinking all the while that we are about to fall and break our neck.  But, the job is done and I am breathing again.  (Isn't it strange that when we put our bodies in peril, no matter how slight, we tend to hold our breath until back to normal footing?  You'd think we would be busy getting as much air in as possible, not keeping it out.  Oh, well.... that's what most of us do, anyway.)

I suppose to really appreciate the peril involved in this  activity you first must realize that the ceiling is at least 10 ft.  (I'm sure it is 15 ft. if it is an inch, but I'm told it is 10 ft. and he has made me a believer after all these years that he is always right.)  But, I was the one hanging in mid-air hanging the garden.   NEWS FLASH!!  This just in:  the ceiling is 12ft.  This is the first time in the history of Francis that he has been mistaken.  Not wrong, mind you, but a little mistaken.  There's a difference.

The Fantastic Garden is a puzzle print - the result of the organizational, drafting, cutting, sawing,  creative, herding, and printing skills of Maria Arango-Diener.  I've forgotten how many artists are involved, but they come from all over the globe and each contributes their idea of the project theme, in this case the Fantastic Garden, and then Maria re-assembles all the parts, prints them and sends us each a print.  This print is 4 sheets, each 22" x 30", so that would make the total surface 44" x 60" if my calculator doesn't lie.  Altogether it is a pretty fantastic woodblock print carved from cherry plywood and printed on Stonehenge Rising.

Thanks to all you wonderful Baren Forum woodblock members (and especially to Maria the Wonder Woman of the World of Woodblock) for enriching my life and making my studio Extraordinaire.  It will be even more extraordinaire when I get the City of the World up on the wall.  But, that will have to wait until next week - it will take me that long to drag the ladder back in again.

A Printmaker At Heart

A funny thing happened on my way to nowhere in the middle of the Serengeti last week.  My party and I were merrily bouncing along when we happened upon a Lion pair snoozing beside the road.  The moment we stopped moving they stopped napping and began inspecting our vehicles.  This could have been a Vehicle Emissions Test Station, but it was not so marked.  Mr. Lion continued his snooze, but his lady friend was intensely curious.  She was particularly enamored with the spare tire cover on the vehicle immediately preceding the one I was in.  I'm sure I could read her mind and she was saying:

 "Hummm, This is something new. I wonder how they did this, it is a very interesting effect.

Looking from this angle I think I can see how they did it.

Ahh, yes, first the tire and then this thing over it. Yes, I will have to try that.

But, for now, I think I'll just have a little snooze and think about it."

Now, if that doesn't sound like a printmaker I'll eat my Wildebeest.  We had to wait several minutes for this couple to get out from under the vehicles so we could be on our way to snapping photos of other beautiful creatures.  I must have roughly 652 photos of lions, although some of those could be elephants.  Some day I will have to count them, but for today, I think I'll snooze and think about it. There could be a print in there - in fact, I think there is......zzzzzzzz

Photo Finish

The ponies are headed for the finish line and with any luck at all, they will reach it today!  The latest incarnation involves playing in mica.  Well, why not?  The deadline is flexible so I can take as long as it takes, which is really quite a grand feeling!

There is some pesky trimming to be done, too - unfortunately, the fingers were not always pristinely clean when handling the paper.  Rats.  Here is a photo of the pony with his/her iridescent  circles - I hope they will show up on various monitors….

Now the only thing remaining is the clothing.  You didn't think I would send these babies out in the buff, did you?  Having already gone silly over this project, here is the finishing touch -

After the trimming and dressing are complete there will be the little matter of finding envelopes which fit.  Oh oh.  Probably should have thought about that quite some time ago.  And then there is also the story about this little pony to be written.  He/she has had quite an illustrious past and I'm sure everyone will want to know all the delicious details….. maybe not!  At any rate, I do hope everyone will enjoy this little fella as much as I've enjoyed putting it together and that it will bring you veritable downpours of good luck in many different forms.

Trouble at the OK Corral

This gift horse is quickly becoming the gift that keeps on giving.  Finally, I finished mucking about in the background and moved onto the blue and yay! it was time for red.  Such excitement in the corral, and then to my horrified eyes should appear - the part of the red block that I had mistakenly carved away.

The stripe on the saddle nearest the animal's head has no red.  I'm sure to the less obsessive compulsive of us this would not have mattered, but to the rest of us - well, this had to be remedied.  So, on comes the fake wood -  or to be more genteel, QuikWood, as it is known at McClain's.   Or, you can find a similar product at your local home improvement store.  I simply mixed a little ball of this wood putty stuff, flattened it to the right height, smushed it on the block where I'd made my mistake,  and when it was dry, carved the missing part back in.

Now all the stripes have their red part.  The purple line block has been printed again and everyone is in blotters drying.  Or eating, or sleeping, or whatever critters do when they are between blotters and weighted with a piece of plywood.  They will rest there until morning and then it will be on to the next step. I'm not hearing any noise from them - they must be resting peacefully.   I think we can surmise that the trouble at the corral is over.  For the moment.

Meanwhile, I need to run down to the local version of a yarn store and see if I can get the right size needles for the next knitting project.  It is a constant problem to keep me entertained and off the streets.

The Gift Horse

It must be the Year of the Horse - I assume that is why ponies of every description have been galloping in here since last December.  After a  few years forced hiatus (forced by lack of time, and/or energy) from the Barenforum New Years Card Exchange, I decided to again participate.  But, January, February, March and now most of April have come and gone and I have yet to produce a pony.

We've seen Trojan horses, galloping horses, dancing horses, prancing horses, rocking horses, stick horses, horses of many colors, chess piece horses (that was the one I had in mind and then Andrew did it first and better which really ticked me off! Especially the "better" part), and you name it, that kind of horse has been through here.  Henceforth, and to wit and all that, it was really hard to come up with something everyone hasn't already seen.  And then I had a flash of brilliance.  Truthfully, that may be a bit overstated, but suddenly I remembered this little horse on wheels that my granddaughters had when they were toddlers.  They rode that horse all over the house until their legs got too long for it.  Their mother tells me it is a "hand me down horse" from Kmart.  So, I decided to call it the Gift Horse.

Pre-launch of the gift horse I was going to post moment by moment progress, however I was several moments into it before I remembered that that was the plan.  It started with a plain yellow background, followed by a stencil of green circles, another stencil of kind of orangy circles, then those seemed too bright, so another drop of lemon yellow and then I remembered that this was going to be step by step.
But, before I managed to scan it I plunged into the blue body which required two drops to get a bright blue.

Up until this point it really looked pretty much like a beagle with round legs anyway, so you didn't miss much. And then I realized that I really should have printed the purple so I could tell if things were lining up properly.  Guess it has been awhile since I printed this way.  Today the purple is going down and we can see that  registration is going pretty well:

So, this is where we are today - about half way through the purple.  When we move to the next color I'll let you know.  But, a funny thing happened on the way to this print.  I started cutting paper and apparently didn't know when to stop because I have about 68 of these things and it takes a while for me to get through the pile.  Sometimes it is two days to get one color down.  Therefore, don't hold your breath for the next sign of progress.  Easter is coming and there are eggs to prepare and other forms of foolishness and fun.  Happy Easter, Passover, Solstice (a few days late, but hey! any excuse to party) or whatever you may be celebrating this weekend!  We will be having our annual Geriatric Egg Hunt at son and daughter-in-law's house this year.  The age range of hunters is 4 - 80+.  We are heavily slanted on the over 60 end of this thing.  The bunny hides about 150 eggs and it is every man or woman for themselves when the starting whistle is blown!

Starfish in trouble

Insanity seems to be King around here and was apparently waving his scepter and demanding allegiance about last January, when in a fit of fealty I signed up for yet another exchange.  Albeit, this one is a small one - paper size is a petite 5" X 7",  it has a large theme: Let This Be A Sign.  Say, what? Immediately after sign up I realized that the dizziness I was feeling was caused by the million and one questions rotating in my mind, trying to land on something substantial that I could evolve an image from.  But, nothing was happening - it was like when the little whirling circle on the computer just keeps whirling and never stops until you force quit.  This unfortunate state of being lasted for approximately two months.  Then there was a miracle, I kid you not.

On the news one night there was a segment on the status of starfish, some people know them as sea stars, and their perilous fight for survival.  Or fight for something.  They are dying up and down both coasts of the US. and probably other places, too, but those two for sure.  Furthermore. they were exhibiting very unusual behavior such as tearing their own arms off and eating them.  Ewww.  These poor things are in peril big time.  And, then it hit:  OMG that has to be a sign of something, pollution, change in water temperature or salinity due to the polar ice cap melting, no one seems to know what.  But, wait a minute!  Did I say "a sign of something"?  Yes, yes!  It is a SIGN!  And, to add to the festivities, there is a zen tangle drawing in my sketchbook that might be just what I need.  Ahh, but which sketchbook?  I found it without too much sleuthing:

There it is in the lower half of the page!  Next I traced it onto a piece of acetate and exposed it onto a Solarplate™.  Now, a normal person would have just printed it black on white and been perfectly happy with it.  But, we are speaking about moi.  The first thing I thought was, rainbow roll behind the image - yes I could do that - so I did.

Ummmm, she kind of gets lost in the background - maybe a little chine collé.  After trying a pink and a purple I landed on yellow - most of the starfish I've seen on our coast have been a bright yellow, so that was a winner.  I made an acetate stencil to lay down after the black ink and before the rainbow roll.

Never one to quit before it's too late, if one chine collé is good, how about two?  I just happened to have something perfect in the "white decorate papers" drawer.  So, a wonderful paper with streaks of silver undulating through it seemed to me to be the perfect complement.

The only problem was that the silver from the wonder paper would be forced onto the plate after every trip through the press and it would not come off with anything.  I tried baby oil, turps, mineral spirits, water (which is really not a good thing on solar plate). and finally, in a fit of desperation, De-Solv-It.  Which fortunately did not dissolve the plate, but did get rid of the silver residue, and that stuff had to go because it wanted to collect black ink on the next print and that certainly would not do.  After that problem was solved (no pun intended) I could go on to the last step: a blind embossing of the name STARFISH. (You may have to click on the image and enlarge it to see the embossing.) To my demented mind this signified the disappearance of this oceanic life form, if we humans don't do something to help them out.  Without them how and what will the anemones eat?  

The answer to the theme "Let This Be A Sign" was held in one little news segment on the Nightly News Report.  Who would have guessed?  Well, I'm very glad to have that out of the way and now it is on to the next quandary.  What am I going to do for my Year of the Horse card for the exchange on the Barenforum site?  I'll be watching the news for inspiration.  And, I'm thinking it will be a woodblock print - just for a change of pace and because the fingers are actually feeling pretty good these days!  Just will be keeping those fingers crossed that Arthur Itis doesn't rear his ugly head before I'm finished.

The Ampersand Project

Sometimes I sign up for things for which there is no rational explanation.  This was one of those times.  And then, to make matters a little worse I had a genius idea for the project: an Ampersand Chicken.  I considered her to be absolutely the most gorgeous Ampersand Chick I had ever seen - the only one, as a matter of fact.  The only problem was that no one I showed it to could find the ampersand.  You be the judge:

I thought the tail was a dead giveaway, but alas, no one else I came in contact with agreed.  So, under a coat of paint she went.  The end product is pretty lack luster and not near as comely as my chick, but there was a deadline and this could not go on forever.  The final submission was:

And that is the end of the ampersand project.  If you look closely you will see one red boot - all that is left of the Ampersand Chick.  Bless her soul, she is resting in peace.

It was a rush to get the above project finished and in the mail before the floor refinishers arrived on the scene to correct the mess from the water leak last October - the one I came back from Turkey to discover.  The restoration company brought a carload of boxes and we started loading them, two or three a day, and carting them to the studio.  Eventually, they showed up and moved the dining room furniture out and we started piling boxes on top of it.  Then they moved the living room out to whatever room was still available in the first studio room and what wouldn't fit there went into the garage.  Boxes of books and family memorabilia were everywhere.

Next was our move to the remaining rooms of the studio, where we were to reside for a week.  I thought, "This will be a piece of cake! I have an edition to print and we can go out to dinner every night courtesy of our insurance premiums."  HA! WRONG - O!  As soon as we were firmly ensconced it started to snow and the following week was nothing but snow and ice.  We were, effectively, snowed in.  It doesn't take much in the Northwest.  We didn't want to go out and have one of those crazy drivers who don't slow down for anything slamming into us, so we just stayed put until the roads were clear.   My edition was pulled and then some.  This is for the Soltice exchange that Charles Morgan curates - the theme is Making a Difference. 

The Winds of Change

Image size  8" x 7" 

Multi plate intaglio a la poupee

Edition of 30

Somerset Satin paper Gamblin Etching Inks

$75.00

The image is based, loosely, on the wheat fields of Eastern Oregon  which, in recent years, have been sprouting wind turbines right and left.  We have a choice on our electric bill to opt for renewable resources for a certain percentage of the bill, which we do.  I hope we are making a difference in our own tiny way.

We are now almost totally moved back in to the house and everything put away where it belongs, or close to it, anyway.  The only thing left is removing the cardboard from under chair and table legs and putting the carpets back down.  That is due to happen tomorrow and when it is complete I'm cracking a bottle of champaign and possibly downing it single handed.  (Hopefully not! I am a terrible drunk - going from tipsy to sickly somewhere between two and three glasses.)

Now it is time to tackle the next project and I am determined to KISS (keep it simple, Stupid) as this last one turned out to be a monster to print cleanly.  After trying everything this side of Mars to allow me to wipe a Solarplate™ cleanly, I finally opted for acetate masks.  They worked, but between the delicate inking and getting the masks to stay in place during their trips through the press, the kill rate was very high!  We'll see if the lesson has been learned….