Studio, Exhibition and Interview

I finally got a chance to sit down and write from in between illustrating and running the house. While I have been busy with my nose buried in the studio every week, my hedgehog engraving has been popular in Etsy Treasuries, here are a couple for you to see. They are all quite beautiful.

NEWS: My work is currently up in the real world at the Washington State Convention Center. The exhibition is titled PS 5 and it features prints by South Puget Sound artists Dorothy McQuistion, Bill Colby, Janet Marcavage, Ann Johnston-Schuster and me. The exhibition runs through Oct 23rd, so you have plenty of time to go see it. The address for the convention center is: Level 2 South Galleria, 800 Convention Place, Seattle, WA. Hours are 7am-10pm.

The other bit of news is that my work and an interview are also featured on the Printsy Blog. Its quite a fun little interview with pictures of prints for sale in my shop.

I love to browse the other entries on the blog on my free time. The whole site is devoted to printmakers who are on Etsy and the articles feature work from one end of the spectrum to the other. It is wonderful and encouraging to see how many talented printmakers are selling work in alternative venues outside of the traditional gallery system. I like galleries, but with the constant moving, I find it easier to sell online and though exhibitions.

Mentioned in the previous posts was that I had carved a place to work in our new house. My husband is the greatest, and let me take up half of our living room to use as a studio, with flat file, presses and equipment. Otherwise it would have had to go up two narrow flights of stairs, to the third floor, which was not the greatest option. I bought this white and orange retro bureau (see below) from a yard sale, that has a shelf that folds down to a writing table. It works perfectly in a small space to paint on. I have given myself a time limit to finish all the rest of the illustrations in the next two weeks. I have been painting or drawing just about every day for a couple of weeks now, and am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I only have 5 images to draw and paint.

So to illuminate the process, I took some pictures. When working on a book illustration with a character, you want it to look the same thoughout the book. Being towards the end of the book, I have a set way of painting the little wren that makes it much easier than in the beginning, when I was just getting to know the her. When working, the whole place looks like a big mess, since I spread other finished illustrations on the table next to me with the manuscript and reference images, so I can constantly look over to make sure colors look the same thoughout. I tidied it up for the picture a little bit...

I start by sketching on any sheet of paper that I have handy- normally I do have something better than a notebook though (but you never know when inspiration strikes). Here is a sketch for a 1/3 page illustration of the little wren sitting in her nest. I normally just keep drawing over and refining the sketch until it is they way that I want the final illustration to look. Then I trace the main lines on watercolor paper and start painting away.

How do I know what to draw for the book? I have gone over the manuscript with the author in the beginning. We talked about color themes, how she envisions the illustrations and what her expectations were. The text was also divided up to fit 1/4 - 1 page illustrations. The author had a general idea of what she wanted me to draw for each one but was open to suggestions and input from me. Throughout the process as I finished images, I sent them to her for approval. Sometimes I made suggestions on how to adjust the illustrations and sometimes she had some changes to make. So it has been a flexible process as we go along. The author I am working with is wonderful- she gives me a lot of freedom to interpret and if needed change the illustrations around. Working with such a great partner also makes me want to paint even better and make the book look absolutely beautiful. I can't wait for it to actually be finished.

I am painting borders for each page of the book. Below you can see how the finished nest illustration will look set on a page. The text is obviously missing, but it will go on the top and if needed slightly around the illustration.

Here is the beginning of another image. On the left you can see the manuscript with a quick sketch of my idea on it. The sketch for the illustration is in the middle. I just use watercolors to paint with and normally use a dark outline around the basic forms on the page.

Here is the little wren singing. I decided to flip her facing the other way to make her look more natural in the layout of the pages.

After I am done with the illustrations, they will all be scanned in with a high resolution. Then they'll be set within the borders. Everything will be imported to Adobe InDesign to put the illustrations together with the text and then the book will be ready for publishing! It has been a very exciting process, and I will keep you posted on when the book is ready. I don't want to give out too much information before it is all done.

So now you know how I work, not very glamorous, but it works and I would not want to do anything else! Next time I'll share a small intaglio printmaking tip from Dan Welden.

San Antonio Print Crop

I have arrived back in Washington from Texas! It's good to be back home, my own bed, a loving husband, a terrific dog, home cooked meals and working in my own studio. I have the "Tacoma is For Lovers" craft fair at King's Books this weekend so I will try to get some sewing done for a change. Before I left for two weeks I had gotten some very nice Japanese fabrics to sew stuff from. Can't wait to get my hands on those.

Back to TX- The trip to San Antonio was a great deal fun. I finished 4 plates and printed 3 editions (the last one I'll have to print at home), I was able to talk to over 10 classes about what I do as printmaker, help some students become better at printing and see some old friends and spend time with them. How can it get any better than that. The first print I finished was that two color reduction linocut (see previous post). For the second color I mixed a dark brown ink and printed that on top of the first lighter brown. It looked good so I went ahead and printed the edition.

Here is how it turned out, it is printed on Fawn colored stonehenge paper. The color is a light grayish brown. Below it is also a detail of one of the deer. I quite like the way this one turned out, but my favorite print from the trip is yet to come.

If you haven't been to TX, let me tell you they really do have lots of deer. I stayed over one of the weekends at a friends house, and they had a whole herd (?) of deer in their front yard. Here's the two last to leave, a mommy and it's baby. The deer were quite tame, we were really close, I only had a little point and shoot with me to take this picture with.

After finishing the first linocut, I had about 5-6 workdays left. I was not sure how long things would take, so I wanted to work on a mini etching. A friend suggested I do a print with an armadillo, since I was in TX, so I figured why not.

The plate was printed twice for this edition. First I inked it up with black and printed it as a regular line etching. Then after the whole edition was done, I went back and relief rolled a light beige color on and used a q-tip to clean out the armadillo and mouse and then that got printed on top of the line etching for the chine colle look-a-like effect. The plate measures about 2.5" tall. Should have put a quarter next to the piece...

So after finishing "Tank" I had a couple more days to work. I figured I would do another mini plate, with the leftover paper I had. (I brought my own paper to print on, so I knew not to overpack on the way down.) This little guy is about the same size as the armadillo. I was thinking of other ways animals could hassle humans as they fight to get their land back from sprawling suburbs (the current theme in my work) and thought of swallows- they live everywhere and I am always afraid one day one will miscalculate and I'll have a big gash in my head. So was born the Dive Bomber print. I gave him some war paint for the extra twist. Hope you like it. The red highlights and beige background color were added with watercolor. Both the armadillo and swallow are created with repeated line etches on top of each other to get the desired gradation from light to dark.

I had one more day in the print shop before I had to go. Now what, I am just about out of paper, and have no time to edition anything any more, but I am no one to just sit around and twiddle my thumbs... I figure since I've been working so hard, I can do what ever I want- and this time I felt like I just wanted to draw a horse.

The etching is based on a photo and drawing and it ended up taking the last work day (12hrs) in the studio. I wanted it to be an excellent piece as far as technique was concerned, since the subject matter wasn't necessarily very high-arty (I made up a new word!). We had visited a museum in San Antonio and I had learned of three woman printmakers- Beth Van Hoesen, Andrea Rich and Mary Bonner. All of them did splendid animal prints, and I was very inspired to make my own. I'll have to do some book reports on them soon. ;-) So here is the last proof of the horse, I called her Faithful, she looked like a good horse. I really liked how the plate turned out and hope to print the edition off of it in the following weeks when I can get on a press big enough somewhere. The plate is about 6"x8" and my little press at home won't print that.

This print uses both line etching and soft ground for the tonal values. You can see the lines in the detail, and the soft ground crayon-like lines in the highlight in the top left corner. All the prints I finished will eventually be in my Etsy store. If you can't wait or they would make a great gift for someone right now, just contact me and we can work it out.