Artistic Update

Since my show I haven’t done quite as much painting as the rest of the year, and then the holidays put a crimp in my style when it comes to painting and my etching workshops. Of note however I have just completed a commissioned portrait that I’m very pleased with. I’ll take a photo of it before it goes to its home and share here. I’m also working on a portrait of a couple, another painter and his wife. It was a trade for a portrait of me and my partner. This one is significantly harder to do. Not because either of the subjects are difficult but I’m doing it in their home, which means I’m not in my element, and because of the complexity of the image. It was very important to the couple to be seen in their own environment, including details. I tend to be a simplifier that likes to concentrate on the figure.

One interesting part of the painting that does seem to be working well is that I’m using an old unwanted landscape of the sitter to paint on and it appears that elements of his original work will be left in, making it a bit of a collaboration as well as creating an unusual space. Again, before I release it to the owners, I’ll try and get a picture to share.

My jewelry creation has been on total hiatus since the Christmas shows I did, lack of sales there and on Etsy discouraged creativity. I am about to start work on a new necklace though, a choker of coffee beans using vintage beads and copper findings and chain. I think it will look very good when it’s done. I am definitely moving away from thinking about my pieces in terms of sales and looking at them as works of art in themselves. This is definitely better artistically but won’t help pay the bills!

Ok, artistic update is over.

Short and Sweet Update

What a week! Even now as I type this the snow keeps falling and falling, but what a lovely snowfall it is. It's the kind where every individual snowflake is quite distinct, a tiny piece of ephemeral art cast upon the air, most destined to be lost in the white, melted by morning.

I ended up selling a number of paintings from my show; not for a spectacular price but an anonymous benefactor wanted to make a gift of several of them to the sitters and since I have no need for twenty portraits I was happy to offer a bulk discount. That was followed by a commission for another portrait. Again it was not exactly for a great deal of money but at this point I would rather have some of my children out there in the world than worry about undercutting my competitors or selling myself short. After all we're talking portraiture!

On an equally happy note I'm still adoring my etching workshops and here is the completed portrait of my mother. Please see earlier post for the first pull. I hope to be able to set up my own print studio one day such is my enthusiasm for the medium.

Etching My Mother

Last night was another etching workshop. This time I worked on a doing an etching from a portrait I did of my mother. The image is from one of my test pulls from last night. I still plan to aquatint this image to create volume in the face. The original is an oil painting about 18inches by 24inches done on linen and the likeness is very good. I had attempted to capture my mother at least three over times through the years and always failed. She wasn't the best sitter in the world. She had a tendency to fidget and worry that I was making her look too old. This time she didn't worry and promised to sit still, but also I think it was better because I was really warmed up when I did this painting. It was in the middle of about twenty-five different portraits I did in six months. I don't work with sketches but use a live model, sketch onto the canvas in charcoal, and then start painting right on top of that.

For the etching I shrunk the image in Photoshop and then converted it to grey scale to simplify the line and the volume. I was still quite worried that it wouldn't translate or that my inexperience as an etcher would render the piece unrecognizable from either the original or the model, but I needn't have worried! Here is the original painting for some comparison. Once I do the aquatint next Wednesday I'll do an update on the process.

Artistic Update

I had a lovely dinner at a Thai restaurant last night with my mentor and professor Gary, from when I was an undergraduate at Smith College, and his wife Deedee. It was really flattering because I had sent him a show card for my show this month and he had made the effort to come and see it and have dinner with us. It was so nice and refreshing to look at my paintings with him and hear his insightful critiques once again. He is really such a warm and yet forthright teacher, and he remains my favorite critic to this day. He made sure to let me know how much he enjoyed the work (comparing me to Alice Neels, a comparison I often hear), but also to have really useful and interesting things to say about what specifically worked or didn’t work for him in various pieces.

Then he asked me what was next and I told him about my etching class and that was great too because he’s a printmaker as well as a painter himself and so we talked about that and he encouraged me to work on some of the same ideas I had been working on in the paintings – which is, actually, one of the things I had been thinking about doing!

And just to show how productive I have been in general here is a photo of one of my latest creations that I’m selling at Etsy. I love these elegant winter themed earrings in silver, kyanite, and pearl. I have more of these snowflake charms in a couple different sizes so I think I’m going to work on an earrings and necklace set.

Learning to Etch

Oh my god, I'm absolutely pooped. I spent this weekend at an etching workshop (had to time off work but sooooo worth it). I have wanted to learn to etch for twenty years and it was everything I thought it would be and more. I'm already a copperholic. Truth be told I'm also a little sore.

The class, taught by two women at Twin Vixen Press, started right at the beginning with the preparation of the copper plate for etching. This included filing the edges to a 45 degree angle so that the roller on the press could easily catch the edge of the plate during printing. That part seemed tedious but I was assured that if I was doing it all the time I could use a belt sander! Once that was done it was on to sanding the plate to make sure the surface was smooth and free from marks that would show up in the print. Some do anyway but there are some lovely random accidents that happen in etching on occasion that I quite like.

I had brought some images, as requested, to the workshop and after seeing the size of the plate I selected one of titled Undine from my Female Monsters series (part of my graduate thesis). It was a painting that I actually sold and so rather missed, but fortunately had a good digital photo of on my computer I could print. I then traced the outlines of the image onto tracing paper with dark graphite rich pencil. Next we put hard ground on the plate which is a sort of waxy medium that resists acid. Laying the tracing paper on the dried surface of the ground rubbing with your fingernail actually transfers the graphite drawing to the ground - then using an etching tool you just draw into the ground. You don't have to press hard or anything because you're not dry pointing etching into the copper. The acid bath will do the work.

After that I cleaned off the ground and prepared the plate for a quite test run - to see what I had made. It was pretty neat right away, but lacking in detail that would make the image stand out. I have always loved the quality of line in etching though. It seems to me that it just makes line so much more beautiful. After that I laid down a new hard ground in order to work more into the plate.

After that stage and seeing what the print looked like I then decided to try the aqua tint process. Basically they have this sand box where rosin is dusted onto the plate, then the plate is heated, and after it has completed cooled you can paint another medium onto the plate called stop out (I might remember that wrong) and block out areas you don't want the acid bath to etch. Aqua tint lays done these tiny specks and so when the plate is in the wash these little specks are eaten out of the copper plate. Varying degrees of timing produce lighter or darker tonal ranges. It's a cumulative process so you have to do a bit of arithmetic, working from your lights to your darks as you add more stop out (stop it?) to the plate until finally you feel you're done.

Then wash it all off again, apply the ink, and print. Amazing. I include a scan of my final print. I made quite a few of these today. I look forward to seeing one framed.

Just some final notes about the image: Undine is a mermaid but in keeping with the whole theme "Female Monsters" I was thinking about the early sailor stories that made out mermaids to be fearsome creatures luring sailors to their death. The body of the undine is a moray eel. She is swimming through kelp.