A Bit More for Taking Down Under

Posted on by Sandy Webster

australian-pigments-victoria-full-page

Something a bit different here in the studio this week. I opened my Australian watercolors made from the soils of there. I selected four from a location, state, territory or specific place. Then taking a printmaking paper cut to 5″ x 7″, I taped off the margins I wanted to have a small 4.5″ x 3″ section to receive the washes of paint with a white space between each. Then in those spaces I took watercolors made from soils in my driveway, I placed three different colors in dot form to represent my travels through that area.

Originally I was going to make small collographs to superimpose on the washes but after two days of making them and then testing them, they simply did not work. Too small, not enough detail and they looked too much like stamping images. Those small collographs might become part of something bigger another time as it is hard to just toss out two days work.

But I do like using the watercolors of home plus those of different places in Australia. I also like how they look in a row. Together they have the look of long travels. Take a look here at some of them.

australian-pigments-tasmania-2australian-pigments-queenslandaustralian-pigments-tasmania-1australian-pigments-canarvan-gorgeaustralian-pigments-ntaustralian-pigments-victoria

They also remind me of my white line printmaking with that negative white space between colors. The class I am doing at Halls Gap is a masters class using the white line technique to make prints that are stitchable into books or onto cloth. I can see the students doing something like this with their watercolors and then perhaps french knots in those white spaces.

After that workshop is over, some of favorite students over the past twenty years are renting a large house for several days just to be able to work together, share meals, ideas and time. I am thinking that since I will have my carving tools and blocks with me, all I need is to take the pigments of home and there to make a book of my travels throughout the land of Australia. In the meantime I think I need to make a larger painting in this style and perhaps change up the mark making. My brain is buzzing with this and all the possibilities.

More later.

Dry Point Etchings Heading in New Directions

Posted on by Sandy Webster

owl and several emus

I reworked the owl and boat etching to get the blacks blacker and ran about six more prints. With the emu etching I stayed a bit loose and found that the one emu was enough. The smaller one in the background of the photo just added confusion. But and this is a big “but”, I cannot get rid of the edge of these plexi-glass plates. It shows in the print no matter how well I wipe it off. The saw and then the sander create a texture that just soaks up the ink and will not release it. And of course it is never evenly colored. Blotchy at best. So I was thinking this morning, “what happens if I cut off the border and use the emu another way?”

owl and emu

AND I wanted to color in his beautiful large brown eyes with watercolor paint. Once those eyes got the color it changed him into something more animated, something more lively. So I decided to take him back to Australia by way of using the paper tea bags from tea drunk down under and shifu threads I had made using the soils of Australia to color them. I like the result below.

emu stitched

This piece is signed by the colors of Australia on the left and my name and color from my driveway on the right. It is on an 11 x 14 paper and will be matted in cream with an eight by ten opening. When I finished that one, I went to the gum tree from two weeks ago and chose an artist proof done in an umber ink. I matched it with some tea bags and more shifu threads stitched into the piece. Again it is signed by Australia and myself.

gum tree stitched

They are reminiscent of the altered wood block prints that I scanned into my computer a few years back and then added the cloth and other bits from Australia. I sold out of most of those while in Australia in 2014.  Here is an image of one of those.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I like the new ones better. Something about using the limited edition of prints made with dry point etching on plexi-glass. Only so many can be printed and then the burr of the line gets pushed down and does not hold the ink as well.

It has been an interesting process getting the details using this type of printmaking technique. There is still a whole lot of daylight between Rembrandt’s etchings and mine….but I feel better about my own the more I do.

As far as the stitching into them goes, it seems a natural influence of the scrapbook pages I have also been working on. Here is the fifth decade.

Scrapbook fifth decade lo res

Dry Point Etching Inspired by Another Artwork

Posted on by Sandy Webster

owlkayak

This is a four foot square canvas I painted a few years ago. It is the only one of the original six that I still have in its previous form. Others have sold or been donated, or covered over. I wanted to use just part of the owl and the boat behind it to be the subject for a dry point etching on plexiglass.

Here is the cropped image and the etching in progress.

Dry point etching of owl and boat with tool

Dry point etching of owl detail

I managed to pull eleven prints from the plate so far and will do more after I closely examine them to see if more etching is necessary.  It is the same size as the tree one done earlier, about 5 x 7 inches.

Owl etchings on line

Owl etching

The next one I will work on is the emu. I photographed him outside our classroom in Halls Gap last March. They have such beautiful big brown eyes. I altered my photograph to look more like the marks that need to be etched to get the flow of his feathers.

Dry point etching plate of emu

I only have the one tool that seems able to scratch the surface of the plexiglass. It is a simple one that I bought in Melbourne at a art supply store just off Flinders Street and a short walk from my hotel. The metal etching tool from undergraduate school days needs to be sharpened to be of much use to me so I will do that down at the shop or on my belt sander in the studio.

Maybe a kangaroo for the final plate this size. For now I am taking a few days off to spend with company and just playing in the studio.

 

More on the Scrapbook – More on Life

Posted on by Sandy Webster

It has been a very busy last ten days. Two resident students were here to do work in the studio. All my time is given to their needs. They each have something that needs to be fixed into a visual form. We first met in a workshop several years ago and have continued here to meet in a place where I can push just enough and do the mundane work of cutting, drilling, gluing while they make the work. I am exhausted by the end of the day. What they each are going through in their lives spills out into my personal place of making. Whatever I am working on simply goes on hold while I give whatever I can to see their plans realized. Sometimes I need to listen more closely, sometimes I need to step in and prod them to move ahead. And sometimes I just need to pour more wine. The seriousness of how much their work matters can be draining but I would not have it any other way. It is the least I can do in the face of what they are going through.

But, after they were gone and the studio and apartment put back in order, I went back to my own life and the scrapbook of decades.

Here are a few details of some of them.

scrapbook third decade detail 2

This is part of a page that represents my twentys. I am married with two children and am so much about family, friends and the small town we lived in

scrapbook fourth decade detail

And the thirties. It is all about experiencing “craft”. It was such a fun time and somehow at that age one thinks it will be like this forever. Just sit and weave, make baskets and put beads on everything.

And then the forties….a move to North Carolina, the children on their own. I am returning to college to finish an undergraduate degree and start on my MFA. Craftsmanship gives way to idea driven work and accountability as an artist. Tough times with so much more thinking, so much more passion. And no more decorative beading.

Scrapbook fifth decade lo res

I like stitching on these pages. They are very raw in a way. Picking the bits and pieces that capture the essence of who and what I was for that decade is challenging. I know when the page is complete. I know when I say, “Yes, that is how it was”.

I have enough of them now to see how it feels to turn the pages and see the marks of the previous decade influencing how I view the next one. They have made me think about life and how lucky I am to be living long enough to work on an eighth decade for this scrapbook.

I also took time to work on an etching. Again trying to channel Rembrandt and his lines to make a tree.

gum tree etching pages

It is a plexiglass plate about five by six and one half inches. I am trying out two inks, a dark umber and a black with a bit of umber to warm it. Only ten prints pulled. I colored two of them with watercolors and found that they then became “illustrations”. Something out of Winnie the Pooh book. Not sure I liked that. The print suddenly needed a context, a narrative and of course more illustrations. And the uncolored ones just need signed and framed. Funny how that happened with just a bit of watercolor. I have two more images ready to etch and I will see how it goes with them.

 

brown gum tree etching

dark gum tree etching

colored etching of gum tree

But definitely I am thinking, no color and the darker ink.