Conceptual Self Portrait Finished

After many hours of painting, correcting and small scares, my conceptual self portrait print integrated with oil paint IS FINISHED!

After I printed my image I covered just the face area with gesso. The oil paint will slowly eat away the paper if I painted directly on to the paper. Over years and years mind you, but to preserve the image for a few more generations I first painted gesso in the painted areas.

The oil painting turned out better then I imagined. It was funny because as I was painting it, the whole image looked kind of creepy because the face looked really realistic and it was popping off the page out from this flat image. It was cool to see the image to come to life!

So then to make more contrast, like I did on my test proofs in my previous posts, I hand tinted the grass. I like the contrast between the flesh tints and the green.

And this is the final. Oil painted face and hand tinted integrated on to my original hand pulled print! The over all image is 18" x 14 1/2"

Conceptual Self Portrait Continued...

I have finished carving out my image and I pulled my first proof last night!

This is my matrix before I rolled it up with ink. It was kind of sad covering the image with ink because it thought the matrix itself was really good looking; I like that color green with the black from the drawing. But my sadness was short lived because there is a magical emotion deep in every printmaker's heart when they ink up their image for the first time... ah! It never gets old : D. 

Pulling the print off the press. 

And there it is, in all its glory. Now that i'm looking at it on the computer screen I think the blades of grass read better; looking at it in person the image gets busy and its hard to focus on the grass.

To fix that I experimented with some hand tinting; its just acrylic paint I thinned down with water the painted over the image. I think it looks a lot better, but I might experiment with a few more variations of green before I make my series. 

My plan is still to oil paint the face, integrating oil painting with printmaking. I will upload pictures of that soon! 

Conceptual Self Portrait Realization

Im taking a few painting classes this semester and an advance printmaking class, and the more painting I do for my classes, the more I wish I was in the print studio working on my prints, I am quickly discovering I enjoy printmaking over painting. A few weeks ago we were given our new project for one of my painting classes which was a conceptual self portrait. I began sketching ideas and thinking of ways to incorporate myself into a painting, all the while I felt this was just another assignment I had to get out of the way before I could work on the projects I wanted to do; which is primarily printmaking at this point in my life. That's when I got this idea; if this was going to be a conceptual self portrait about myself, it should reflect me even in the medium i'm using. So let me show you  my sketch for my new piece i'm working on for my self portrait. 

I wanted a piece that looked interesting and something different then what I have done before. I was surprised when this sketch came about, I wish I remembered what i was thinking about to lead me to this idea of making my hair out of grass, but the imagery I think is fun and i have some other sketches i'm working on along these same lines. 

Like I said, I thought that if I was doing a self portrait I thought it would be important that even the medium was reflected in who I feel I am. My idea is to combined printmaking and painting; printmaking because that's the medium I feel connected with, and painting because it goes along with the class and what my teachers are trying to teach me. 

I have started carving on my print now, but as I was talking with a fellow student the other day, I made a realization I thought could help other student artist. Countless times I have heard classmates say (and even more numerous I have said) something along the lines of, "I can't wait to be done with school, then I don't have to do these stupid assignments that I don't want to do," or "I just want to do what I want to do without being told by my teachers." As students we want the freedom of doing what we want and even though we learn things in our classes we take, we still maybe feel restricted because we are "in an oil painting class (or any other class as the situation may be) so I can only oil paint in this class because its a class I have to take for graduation." So my realization was: integrate your work and your style in any and all of your classes your taking. 

I bet you were all waiting for some life changing, earth spinning realization, and then you laugh or roll your eyes because of how simple it was, but even though the idea is simple, the idea is don't just do a project because that's what the assignment dictates you have to do, but own the assignment and make it your own. 

My plan for this new piece is to print this image as I normally would as a print, but I have also planned to paint the face in oil paints to fill the requirements of my oil painting class. I am excited because i'm now blurring the lines between two fields of art that I always thought were very separate and distinct. 

My wife is also taking the oil painting class with me, and she was working on some very similar ideas. My wife is a ceramic major and she was talking about making a pot that she would fired then gesso to paint her conceptual self portrait on, to integrate her passions and assignment in a similar way. 

Talking with my fellow artist friend I understand that a lot of art students may feel this way, that they want the freedom to do what they want, but feel that assignments restrict them as artists. This idea of mixing your passions in the various classes you are required to take to obtain your degree should be encouraged and maybe also realized on a personal individual level as well. Maybe this realization hit a more deeper meaning to me then to others reading this because I made it personally, and maybe in the near future it will be more personal to you because you made the realization personal too. 

Some benefits I see to integrating your personal style of art in other classes would be a stronger portfolio when applying for scholarships, jobs/careers, and higher art programs. 

That was a long winded realization, but in the upcoming posts I'll show you how my finished piece turned out. 

Weekend Paper-Making Project

My scrap paper pile began overflowing this weekend so i decided to make some new hand-made paper. I had been wanting to do this for some time but i lacked the materials. I bought a screen that was originally intended for silk screen printing, but i decided it would be a better paper-making screen. And being a cheep skate i decided to make my own deckle.

Here i just ripped up my large sheets of paper into small pieces to blend into pulp. I use cotton paper for drawing and printing primarily so all of this paper is cotton paper. I recycle my paper from old test prints and drawings that i don't want. Its also nice working in a studio with other students because i get a lot of free paper when other students leave their trash around or throw their prints away--in short, i have LOTS of scrap that i get to create into new sheet for me.

I have been playing around with colored paper. I mixed acrylic paint with the paper pulp to dye the paper. Some of the colors are nice but its worth experimenting more. Another benefit to making my own paper is, I use a lot of rice paper in my intaglio prints (its called Chine Colle) and so by making my own paper, I can make it as thin or thick as i want making it cheaper for me. 

Pulling a sheet of paper out of the water.

My first batch of paper. I have more drying but these are the first to dry, be pealed off the plexiglass and ran through the press so they're flat and ready to be used again. Im excited because the size of the paper is large enough that i could make a few good size prints or books. The paper size is about 16" x 12"

My new 8 foot by 4 foot project

Now that i have finished that "Distractions" print, i'm embarking on my new project, the largest i have attempted yet! It will be a 8 foot by 4 foot relief print. I'm pretty excited about it. 

I'm trying to draw it out before I carve into it so that the value and contrast looks correct. 

New relief print

I just finished my new print. "Distractions" 29" x 23 1/2" reduction relief print. My focus while i'm in school is primarily printmaking, so this is along the lines of what i love doing.

Portrait and Figure Painting Class

Currently im taking my second painting class in my history of life, Portrait and Figure painting. Its a great class and im learning a lot about mixing paint and being more confident in my mark making, but it has sure been a struggle for me.

At the beginning of the semester we painted in black and white to practice value. My first painting without a model, we painted the face from our heads.

Each model session is 3 hours.

After working with black and white, we added color to our palette. We added burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. In my first oil painting class we worked a lot in the grisaille method like the old masters, which means they did their under painting in thin oil so they could get shape, value and proportions quickly, then they added glazes on top of their under painting to add color. I was use to this method of painting and not so confident in direct painting where you mix the color you see on your palette then put it on your canvas.

I tended to hold back with thick brush strokes because i feared wasting paint. I would get a good amount of paint on my brush then spread it around my canvas till the color was thin and pastel-looking. My teacher would often walk around and tell me "more paint! we are in a painting class, you need to paint!"

Very slowly did i begin to add more paint to my canvas. Mostly out of annoyance from constantly being reminded by my teacher to paint.

Then one day my teacher tells us that we are going to paint the figure. In my career as a prospective artist and full time art student, i have taken many drawing classes and have worked hard to draw as accurately as i can, but i discovered drawing first with a paint brush is much different then drawing with a pencil/charcoal. I have yet to be pleased with any of my paints thus far, I think for that reason. I haven't been able to get an accurate drawing so all of my paintings look, in my opinion, amiture and inaccurate.

Then we began our 2 day poses. 6 hours with the model instead of 3. This is when i began to see some improvement in my painting; all i need is practice and A LOT of time. I have a new appreciation for painters though. What they do is not easy and not everyone can do it well. I am the case in point.

After working with our limited palette for a few weeks (burnt sienna and ultramarine blue) we switched to a new color palette. I believe it was called the Zorn palette. If that means anything to anyone. We added the colors yellow ochre, cadmium red light, ultramarine blue, and black. This gave us a whole slew of new colors we couldn't really get before. This was a 6 hour pose.

We then switched gears again and began working on the grisaille method like i had mentioned earlier. So this is just a thin painting of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue to get value and proportions down. This was just a 3 hour pose.

And this began as a under painting like the one above, but then we continued this painting till the end. This was a 6 hour pose. Again i feel like i struggled with the initial drawing because drawing with a paint brush is still foreign to me, but i definitely felt i improved on getting more paint down on the canvas! I have a long ways to go but im now starting to paint!

The semester is still in session and we are currently working on the full figure.

First

My first post.... i thought it was going to be a bit more exciting then this. Like the moment right before you pull a print off the press for the first time! The excitement in your deep stomach to see if the print turned out the way you hoped it would. If your a printmaker, you know what im talking about.