New Holiday Print

A few printmakers here at school decided to re-create the printmaking guild and host seasonal print sales to show off our work and sale prints for extra money. Before finals approached, we had our Christmas print sale. I actually didn't get this print ready for the sale but it turned out great (in my biased opinion :D) so I wanted it to share it!

I had already laid down the first 3 colors and am now working on my 4th. Im rolling out the ink on a sheet of glass with a brayer then rolling it over my carved image.

This is the image before my current color. It a seasonal print. 

Here is how I keep the colors lined up. I got this idea from another blog, Tugboat Print shop, when I employed my woodworking skills to create this jig. I set my carving into the corner of the wood jig then I place the paper on top of the carving in its own groove I cut out. The image should fall in the same place every time, in theory :D Practice is required. Over all I lined up all of my colors really well; Its been a great registration system for me.

Now we're ready to run through the press. Oh, but don't forget to take the wood jig away; you don't run that through the press. Once the paper is in place it slides away really easy.

Now through the press

Here we go! 4 colors down and one more to go!

 The colors are looking great. It one of the more colorful prints I have ever done.

This is the final print. The title is "Happy Hallothankmas" Like I mentioned above, I was trying to get this done for our Christmas print sale and as I was gathering ideas for prints I would make for the sale, I came across a comic strip someone had created where a turkey was dressed up in a jack-o-lantern wearing a Santa hat holding a sign saying "happy hallothankmas" which I thought was awesome! So I decided I would create my own rendition. TA DA! This is for this crazy time of year when all the holidays seem to merge together. And to all of you, this holiday season "Happy Hallothankmas!"

Also; if you are interested in this print or any other you see here on my blog, these prints are available for purchase on my Etsy Shop at https://www.etsy.com/your/listings?ref=si_your_shop Thanks!!

Happy Halloween!

Its Halloween time and I decided to make some Halloween prints to sell!
First I created a Zombie who's name is "Fester Armeater" There are 2 editions of this. The first is an edition of 25, black and white. The second edition is 6 and its a brown grey color. Ill have to get a picture of it and add it to the post.

Then I noticed he was lonely and needed some friends so I created Dracula, Frankenstein, and a skeleton. 

and last but not least, my personal favorite!! Get ready for some Halloween humor; it's really punny! 

I decided to make a Halloween card. Its a zombie dog with a bone in its mouth, then on the inside it reads "I found this humerus."  The edition size is 12. 

If you see anything you like, feel free to contact me about the price. I will also be posting them to Etsy shortly, so you can keep your eyes open for that too. 

New Art Show at The Grind Coffee House

For the whole month of July, some of my prints will be hanging in The Grind Coffee House in Cedar City Utah. I'm excited for the opportunity to show my work in the community and hopefully there will be a lot of people who will pass through and see my work. So if by chance you're passing through Utah and are in Cedar City for the Utah's Summer Games, or The Shakespearean Festival within the month of July, come stop by The Grind Coffee House on Main Street, grab a cup of coffee and check out my work!

I have 9 pieces hanging.

"Less Think, Do More"

"Between Life and Death"

"Courage Even In Darkness"

"Distractions"

"Snail Shenanigans"

"Gastropods"
I also have "Self Portrait" hanging but my pictures of it came out blurry.

Snow College Printmaking Workshop

This past week I was able to go back to Snow College where I studied art for 3 years and take a week long printmaking workshop taught by Stefanie Dykes. She was an amazing person to meet and work with! I learned a lot, got a lot of feedback and received a lot of printmaking references and names of working printmakers.

Stefanie is the co-founder of Saltgrass Printmakers in Salt Lake Utah, which is a studio where people can come into and use the presses for their work, take classes and participate in workshops. Her link to Saltgrass is www.SaltgrassPrintmakers.org

During the course of the week we worked on a number of prints. One of the neat things she showed us this week was a simple way to keep a multi-color print registered perfectly. She called this method of registration the "Kento" registration method. From what you can see in the photo, I have a tan board with my print in the center and a strip of white running along the upper edge of the board. 

How we created these was we took a larger Masonite board, Its smooth on the front side and has a rough texture on the back. Flipping the Masonite to the back side we took 2 strips of matte board and glued them to the board with rubber cement. These two strips are for the corner of your paper so you can lay your paper down in the exact place every time. From the edge of the 2 strips of matte board we measured out 1 1/2 Inches from the top and from the side. This space is for the margin so that we have equal space around the print. Mark it and that's where you will put the edge of  print material like Sintra, Linoleum, or wood. Glue the printing material with rubber cement to the Masonite. After both the Linoleum and matte board are glued to the Masonite we coated the whole thing (minus the linoleum) with an acrylic gel medium so that when you're inking up your image, if you get ink on your board you can wipe it off easily so the ink doesn't get on your paper.

Here i'm inking my plate with my 3rd color. The registration is really really simple and pretty difficult to mess up. You just lay the corner of the paper in the corner of the matte board every time and the image should be in the exact place!

Here is my print after the 2nd color. 

 Here is my finished print. Just an non-objected print I did to explore shape, line and color. This is a 4 color print and the registration was really easy on this. Doing other multi-color prints with other various registration methods, this is the method I now prefer.

Hanna's First Lino Print!

Another thing fun and exciting was happening this week; my 12 year old sister-in-law came for a visit and stayed with us for a week. While she was here, my wife and I went to the studio to get work done. It wasn't long before Hanna didn't know what to do and was board. I had some extra linoleum laying around and asked her if she wanted to work on a few prints to keep her occupied. She agreed and then set out to create her very first lino print.

After a while she had her image drawn on her linoleum and carved it out with my old Speedball gouges. Here she is inking her linoleum up for the first time. 

Rolling it through the press.... And....

Bam! Her first lino print!! "You so totally rock Squirt!!" -Crush, Finding Nemo.

Dude, this is an awesome first print! Nicely done Hanna!! "Give me some fin, noggin, dude." 

Progress on 8' x 4' print

Since being hired on Home Depot's freight night crew I feel like a slacker because some days I just dont feel motivated to come into the studio and print. I like my job and am grateful to have it because my bills couldn't be paid otherwise, but at the same time its difficult to work when I would rather be in the studio printing, doing what I love.

So after many weeks of not posting anything on my blog I finely have something to update! Sorry for the long wait...

Slowly I've been working on my 8' x 4' print. A print this size is more work then I originally thought, and has taken more time then I planned. Which shouldn't have surprised me because the first of art is: "Art always takes longer then you plan." Need I say more.

As I was getting ready to write this post, I looked for some pictures I took some time ago showing more of my process and how I prepared my sintra for printing, but I must have misplaced them.... So anyway. After I drew my image on the sintra with a sharpie marker, I took acrylic paint and painted the whole surface.

I paint it a color that isn't very distracting but dark enough that when I step back and squint my eyes I can get a feel for what the print will look like if I were to pull a test proof right then. Yet the paint is also light enough that I can still see the sharpie. The primary reason I do this is so that there is the contrast between what i've printed already and what I haven't. So I really like painting my matrix before I carve. If any of you were to try this let me give you a heads up; its easier to draw the image with sharpie first before you paint because i've found that the sharpie has a more difficult time going on top of the paint, it almost feels like the paint dries out the marker a little bit. So I like to get a good drawing done first before I paint it to make it easier on myself. Just a heads up. 

So now i've started to carve! I'm really excited to see it begin to take shape. Because of my schedule I haven't been able to dedicate as much time as I would like to on this piece, but 'slowly but surely' right? 

Here the first figure is carved and so is the heart and jar. 

I then worked on the trunk of the tree and the second figure. Eventually I began working on the back ground. It was a lot of straight lines..... 

It was a good day, this day I made some serious headway in my print! I love days like this! 

And this is where I am currently! I've come a long way in the past few weeks but still have a long way to go. 

Post Final Print

Finals are over!! And what a good feeling it is.
After I finished all of my final tests and papers I went into the print studio and did something just to relax, and actually this was a lot of fun. I had never done anything like this before but it was something I really enjoyed.

I took a scrap of sintra and just began to scribble on it with sharpie markers. I have a few with thick and thin tips, and I used them all to give me a variety of line. No subject matter, I just scribbled. It was really relaxing.  Then I began to carve it. Originally my thought was just to make a one color print but in the middle of my carving I got antsy and wanted to print. In the middle of carving is when my A.D.D. manifests itself the most so instead of pushing through the feelings of antsiness, I mixed up a few colors and made a two color abstract print.

The print size is 20" x 6 1/2" and I only printed 6 with the colors (2 of each color, Blue Yellow and Orange) and 2 just Brown and Black making 8 prints total. It was a quick print too, it only took me 3-4 hours to do from start to finish. I think they look interesting by themselves but my wife and I started putting them together to see what they would look like. 

It almost changes the image completely putting them together. This again was really fun, quick and relaxing that i've started working on a few more to play/experiment some more.

Let me know what you viewers think. I get a lot of viewers but no comments which makes me think the views are just from people who stumble across my blog instead of people who follow me or even care what I do. So I would like to hear from you. Maybe its all crap, maybe it's just "meh" and maybe you guys think its awesome. But I don't know that because you haven't told me yet...