Praeterita

Day 4 of the class shifted to reduction linocut -- making a multicoloured block print by printing everything from the same block, and cutting away the previous layer of colour before inking up for the next one. Once again, everyone in the class had a lot of fun, and within half a day were moving on to try some pretty complex things.

Day 3, in which I helped the participants complete a 5-print edition of their solar plate images. Next, reduction linocuts.

On the second day, we had another person join the class, and we were quickly doing two plate prints of solarplate intaglio, with me acting as studio boss and master printer.

It was solarplate intaglio all day, in the bright sunshine of northern Michigan. We were indoors and outdoors all day long, starting with drying off the ink drawings on the acetate (click on any of the following images to display larger versions): Then we exposed the solarplate for a few minutes with an aquatint screen over them, to create that first 'tooth' for the image to adhere to: Next, exposing the acetate image over the aquatinted solarplates, for just over three minutes: I posted online earlier a picture of Ava's plate drying afterwards in the sun. Here is Ashley's: And then the prints (these photos show their second plates): On the lower image, there is a grey circle created by a drop of water hitting the solarplate before it was exposed to the sun. It turned into one of those errors that gets incorporated into the final plate and ends up looking quite good. We printed two plates for each participant, and they all came out with a great,...

This is where I will be teaching a printmaking class this week. It's the Mallory-Towsley center for the arts, purpose built for the Interlochen College of Creative Arts for their adult programs: It's at the north end of the Interlochen campus, which means in order to get there from my cabin in the woods, I have to walk past all the cabins in which the musical students of the young people's summer camp are practising their instruments. I'm teaching solar plate intaglio first, and the weather forecast looks good for the next two days. Pictures of the first prints to follow...

When I discovered the work of artist Shu-Ju Wang (from Portland, Oregon) on Google Plus, I thought: wow, I would really love to hear her talk about her art. So I asked her, and she said yes. Don't forget to go to her website when you've read this so you can see more of her beautiful prints and artist's books. Bamboo Mountain, Potato Hill  2012  Gouache & acrylic on paper, mounted on birch panels  12"x24 Philip Hartigan: What medium/media do you chiefly use, and why? Shu-Ju Wang : I work mainly with gouache on paper. In the last couple of years, I've been mounting the paper on boards and finishing the pieces with acrylic so that they can hang without glass. I find gouache to be an incredibly versatile medium -- it's reworkable and can be mixed to be more transparent or more opaque. It's also important to me that I don't use toxic cleaners or create plastic waste (unused, dried up acrylic paint). The historic aspect of the medium also pla...

Here are some images from the final day of the Journal and Sketchbook workshop, starting with me posing with Judy, Ava, Jana, and Gail while they hold up one of their blind contour drawings: The week ended with a craft lecture by Jaimy Gordon (author of Lord of Misrule), followed by a participants' reading during which each person read a page from the writing they had worked on during the retreat: Quick impressions of the week: eagle over the shoreline above our heads on the evening of the retreat; furious winds blowing off the lake behind the cabin where we were staying; drinking too much wine in the evenings, staying up too late; talking about opera with Jaimy Gordon; seeing people who don't draw very often growing into the rhythms of the drawing process; hearing developments in people's writing in just four short days; catching Euro 2012 games at the local coffee shop in the woods; taking an early morning walk through the state park and coming very close to ...