More rust people

So there are rules....These are the ones for this rusty paper.  The images emerge from the rust itself.  I don't pre-plan them, but look at the paper, and see what kinds of folks are there.  Sometimes I lightly sketch one out with pencil, but then when I come back to it later (a different day, even), it's someone else there, and I go with that.  And then I use a dip pen, with the same nib, and black India ink.  I so want to use some kind of black wash, but that's not in the boundaries.

So if these people look a bit skewed, know that that's the way they came out of the rust.  All of them are "doodles", in that I just played around with the forms.  No models here.

Rust Princess and others....

It is now summer vacation, perhaps not officially until tomorrow, but the semester is over, grades are in, my room is packed up for the summer, and I am checked out.  Every year I haul home at least one crate of things to work on over the summer, and every year I haul the same crate back untouched.  This year, I'm saving myself the trouble.  This year, I am going to be traveling a lot, and when I'm home, I plan on making lots of art, playing lots of music, and making major improvements in my many out-of-control gardens.  

Unfortunately, I got a cold the last two days of finals, and really didn't want to do anything but lie in bed.  But I'm better today, and since it's been storming all day, and I can't work in the garden, it's art-time.  

Here are two more drawings on some of the rusted paper I made a couple weekends ago on our art-group retreat to the lake.

Emergence, again

Nope, that wasn't quite the last collagraph.  THIS is the last collagraph.  I forgot that I'd tinkered with this plate, and printed it again.  It was the last chance for this plate that was too three-dimensional, but it worked!

I'm really wishing this class went on through the summer, and I don't want to be done with these.  After all my grumbling.....

Last three collagraphs

It's only now, at the very end of my eight week collagraph class that I've finally figured out what I can do with this medium.  I'd like to have another eight weeks to continue working, but alas....my schedule won't permit it.  I'll have to wait until fall.....

This is the print I made for my print class's print exchange.  It's small--4 X 6 ", and this is the first of five.  The other four, I wiped a little bit differently.  I've had lots of fun with these.  They all start out with a fairly loose drawing on a manilla folder, and then I cut them out piece by piece and glue those pieces on a piece of matboard.  Then I seal the whole thing with acrylic varnish, and print them as an intaglio print.

This one is like the others, only before I cut out the pieces of him, I textured the manilla file folder (with the transferred drawing on it) with acrylic gel medium.  I really like the texture, and would like to try to do more of that.  Too bad my collagraph class is over, and since I have too much else going on this summer to sign up for the summer, so I won't have access to the presses.....

This was the third one.....

It was my son who declared that these were all REALLY CREEPY.

Three Old Men

So this is week #7 of my 8 week collagraph class.  Here's one way to get lines.....I did these sketches on a file folder, and then cut them out piece by piece, and glued them down on my "plate" (ie, piece of cardboard), a little bit farther apart than they were cut.

I like the crispness of the edges.

I was also playing around with different colored inks, but I think I'll print this again just black.

Rust drawings

This was "art-weekend"--eight women in a cabin on the lake, with nothing to do but eat good food, drink wine, and make art.  One of the projects was "rusting".  Most of the others were doing it on fabric, but since I'm much more of a paper person, I gave it a shot on watercolor paper.  It worked really fast, with steel wool, and vinegar and water mixed together in a spray bottle.  It wasn't really this red, but that's how my scanner scanned it.  Then I used pen and ink, making the images that were suggested in the rust.  The top one I like, the bottom one I don't (I did for awhile, but then made too many marks).

It's a pretty cool process, one I can see applying to a picture AFTER doing some kind of initial drawing, so that one can make the rusting happen in the places that you desire it.

Falling

Joy is black India ink and a dip pen.

I Hate Making Collagraphs!

They're good for textures--and textures can be really cool--but not so for lines.  So I'm really frustrated.  I'm taking a class, and there are two more sessions, but I haven't made hardly anything that I've liked at all.

The Dive

I'm just not that into these collagraphs.  I printed four of them yesterday, and this is the only one that I liked.  But again, I learned something--this time that if you want ALL of your details to show up, your plate needs to be pretty much the same thickness.  When you have a part that's much thicker than the rest, you lose the details in other places.  I'm not even going to post those....