Its hard to see the path in the fog

It was very cold at the station this morning:

A lot more printing today with some further work on the woodblocks - a lighter grey followed by an overlay of acid blue monoprint. What was fascinating was different peoples' reaction to the dark and light grey with a 50 -50 split of preferences - I think I (marginally, in the end) preferred the light.

I returned to the pipe and produced a third version with a few variations but keeping a dirty yellow -nothing cheerful here, y'know!
This time I didn't really forget the photos but hands were mucky all day and when finished, prints were all drying; so when they are all cleaned up for assessment I will do a photo-call, and equally I will do a selection for the sketch book.

I have been updating my contextual notebook, but a book I am reading on Romantic Art reminded me that I had omitted to mention an artist whose graphic work during this period has proven to be of lasting importance and that is Francisco de Goya (1746 - 1828 ). Goya has always been one of my favourite artists and it was much of his print-work that impressed me when I was a lot younger and wasn't really aware of what graphic work of this type was (in passing, I should mention Robert Hughes life of Goya  which is highly opinionated but very informative and entertaining).
His technique was and is relatively unusual - etching combined with aquatint, producing large smooth areas in the images:

 

Por Que? - Disasters of War -1823

 

 

Towards the  end of his life he adopted the new technique of lithography for the freedom it gave to produce his bull-fighting scenes - Tauromaquia:

  

 

 

 

On my way home the evening the weather was cold and a  little fog was creeping in again producing this image of  The Church ( I would imagine that over the years this church has been done to death by art students but we all think we are getting a special shot ):

 

 

 

 

And , of course

 

Public Print

 

 

Ink - stained pipes

I said last night I would do more sketches on the train this morning ........ and I did.

Have to stop this  -beginning to sound rather pretentious!!?!

Anyway here they are and I was glad I did them because I ultimately used one of them for the block as you will see:

 

 

 I decided to work with this one on the premise that the cuts would be fairly stark. A number of proofs and further cuts were required to get the image to where I wanted it to be and then a second block was made for the under layer of grey. The proofs will go into my sketch-book to show the process in action. I show her the blocks (poor photo -I'll try for a better one tomorrow ):

 

 

I will put in a picture of the final print as it now is but I have to say I'm not that pleased with it as I think the grey was too dark so I am going in first thing tomorrow to mix a light grey and I will see if that is an improvement:

 

 

 

Again I will try to get improved pics under better light conditions. 

 

 

Alright: as Canned Heat would say - On the Road Again

 

with

 

Public Print

 

 

You say you can't remember where we are at  - you must keep up, you know.

 

 

 

 

The path of the conquerer

Well I said they'ld win but I have to admit I wasn't all that confident of the full result; but it came:

 

The victors leave the field.

 

Okay what has this to do with art -well : anyone watching Simon Zebo today would have to admit he was poetry in motion and anyway being there is a study in popular culture.

 

But was it cold...................

 

Right -  here is another sketch, elaborating on the second one above and I feel that this would be the right one to do but maybe two more sketches on the train tomorrow:

 

 

 

 

Alright, it's been a long day.

The path winds around the studio

I have been getting a bit of an odd on my homework.

Here are some of the sketches I have been doing:

 

These are rough sketches from the existing prints as if worked up in wood or lino cut., and looking at them again now I am surprised because I suddenly realise that the one second from top will probably make the best print.

 

Anyway, decided to do a bit of a practise run today using the bottom one and a couple of pieces of woodblock I had here at home:

 

 

 

This was the initial inking, unfortunately only using water-based block ink - practically-speaking there is no comparison with the oil-based ink we have been using in school, but for the purposes of the practise -run it was alright.

Now I wanted to put in a grey layer as well, but I got a very good lesson as to the opacity of white -even in water-based - and was forced to cop on that, of course, the grey goes down first even though the grey block is cut second:

 

 

 

Here are the two blocks and apologies for the rather messy state but I stress that this was simply a test run to see if I had the process right in my head. I may well be told on Monday that this is not the way to do it at all - so be it.

 

Here are the two results:

 

 

 

 

The one on the the right was black base first and grey on top - the left had the black imposed on the grey thus retaining the black cuts. The strange thing is that when I did these I immediately felt that the grey on top was wrong, but when I look at these images I am not so sure. I think when I look at the real thing again I will be reassured!

 

It has been a very valuable exercise and extremely enjoyable, if not very beautiful!

 

We'll give  P P the weekend off.

Woodblocks instead of cobbles

I will just put up some more images from the studio which show the latest prints.

 

Yellow Pipe No 2

 

 

 

Yellow Pipes

 

 

The Desk

 

Des MacMahon gave us an assignment for the weekend which he illustrated by showing what last years electives had done as a one day project:

 

 

 

 

These were a standard size print which everyone did on the brief. However, our assignment is slightly different : we'll be given two woodblocks and the task is to produce a black on grey print from a section of one of the prints already done. This morning and over the weekend we are to produce three drawings in marker one of which is to be worked over the course of Monday. I'll put my sketches up on Sunday (after I return from Munster's qualifying win in Thomond Park, of course).

 

Lets go back to the research. I was talking about W S Hayter (and I printed some images from a book about him for my contextual notebook,today). Two other artists influenced by him were Tinca Stegovec and Mauricio Lasansky. I focused on these because they were unknown to me and on seeking out their work I would have to say I was very impressed:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have no titles or dates unfortunately as these have all come from sites in Slovenian

 

Tinca Stegovec was born in Slovenia in 1927 and in 1963 she went to Paris on a scholarship where she worked in Prof Hayter's Atelier 17.

 

Mauricicio Lasansky (1914 -2012) was born in Buenos Aires but passed most of his life in the US:

 

 

 

 

Apocalyptical Space -1944

El Cardenal -1964

 

Above: Late Portrait of Einstein -1994

Below: Emilio Zapata and Diego Bolivar Our Grandchildren  -1996

 

Now, at the risk of being totally tedious I just have to repeat that I am still being astonished at the range of work covered by print and equally at the number of amazing print artists I have never come across before.

I should just mention here that I have put quite a lot of material into my contextual notebook that would be easier perused there than here.

 

Even on a Friday..........

 

Public Print

 

 

Serious Ink

         The Plate in bed

 

First I must apologise for the odd alignment  of the images - its not intended to be arty it is simply that I am continuing to have considerable difficulty uploading images and Google do not appear to be doing anything to rectify this.

Anyway what you see here a number of images from the first few days of the print elective which I have enjoyed enormously. I think I have already posted a picture of the Yellow Pipe and here are the first prints from that photo. In the bottom picture on the left can be seen the drawing I
produced which eventuated directly in the print and over the next few days I will post some more pics of the second print in this series.

I have been following up some more on printmakers and a name has sprung to the fore which was unfamiliar to me but who seemed to have had a very widespread sphere of influence including Giacometti, Rothko, Miro and Calder.
His name was Stanley William Hayter (1901 -1988) and he spent a good deal of his working life in Paris where he established a very powerful studio - Atelier 17 -  being involved heavily with the Surrealist movement. Once again one is forced to reassess in ones own mind the concept of print.
Just look:

 Cinq Personnages -1946

Ophelia -1936

  Allegro



Tomorrow I will return to printers who were influenced by Hayter and again were artists with whom I was not familiar.


But we can not close without

Public Print