Rummaging for answers in the pages: April 2012

Update! First some food, all from local places. A local restaurant & a local food truck.

Idea for color intaglio print.

Working during Sculpture.

Here's what my aquatint plate looks like.

And what the print looks like (it's Frodo hiding from the Ringwraith). I stayed until about midnight getting three prints done. Inking was probably my big problem (as experienced people looked at it & pointed that out), but i did find that if i modified how i was working so that i didn't allow my paper to dry out, the image came up so much better. Inking intaglio plates is a butt; i can't never figure if i'm under or over wiping until it's too late.

One of these is probably closer to the actual lighting, but then one of them gives better detail of the details.

Mezzotint plate, waiting to have the image drawn onto & stuff. Rocking these things is no joke & can & will kill your arm & a ton of time. Tonia to me re: this plate: "You wouldn't want to sell this, would you....? I'd give you an A!"

For some reference, this is the back of the plate & what it would've originally looked like.

In the Glen Woods.

Bought at Cook Library's annual book sale for fifty cents. Feel slightly wary of the book because of the wording (the fact that a review on the back is like "rich in unexpected exoticism" & i'm like, "Isn't that what the book is supposed to be against?"), but am starting to read it. We shall see.

Get it?

Still need to finish this.

I named my spearmint plant!:

Here's another thing: Apparently there's this newspaper just starting, Word on the Street. As i understand it, other cities have had this kind of thing for a while, but this, for Baltimore, is just getting started. What it is is a paper about Baltimore & about the street, as in homelessness & the like. I think homeless/poor individuals are able to write up articles, things like that, & then the people involved with making the paper (i think many, if not all, are Towson students, in an actual class where the whole point is to produce the paper) put it all together. The vendors of the paper are homeless individuals, & from what i saw in a little mock-up of an issue, they explain that the majority of your dollar-- 60 something %-- goes to the vendor. The other 30ish% goes towards printing the newspaper.

So they're having a silent auction, & want people to donate art for it. We won't get anything (if we file taxes, it's tax deductible); everything will go to Word on the Street. They even have provided paper, as you can see above.

So what i was thinking of doing was maybe making a print? I saved this styrofoam from getting lunch from a food truck last week, & i thought it would be cool to, at least in the process, reference something that gets carelessly thrown away. Because let's be honest, isn't that how society tends to see the poor & homeless? So this piece of styrofoam would be my "plate," or substitute for linoleum, &c. (because it would be a relief print).

I was also kind of thinking of incorporating this in, too, like after printing, cutting the paper down so that it fit within this, & the styrofoam holder acted as a frame. But i don't know if that would be too small, ultimately, or if it would be too much? Like, it would be hitting you over the head? Would it be enough to put the medium down as "relief print made with styrofoam," or should the styrofoam be an obvious part of the piece?

I have one idea for it already, which i will get to in a bit, because sketchbook, it is in, & sketchbook, there are images:

Intaglio is the 3rd printmaking class i've taken, though, so if i truly believe that printmakers are masochists, what does that say about me....? (once said, "I mean, it's all these Germans from the 1700s who made this stuff up!" & my mother went, "Well there you go, Germans." GET IT? Also i may have German ancestry (i thought ppl knew for sure but apparently they don't huzzaw), so THAT EXPLAINS IT LULZ)

My maternal grandmother has been in bad shape for years now. I thought she had Alzheimer's, but apparently my mother uses that term because it's easier to say than something like "she has severe dementia." Her memory's really fucked; she lives in a Catholic nursing home because she can't take care of herself at all. I rarely go there anymore because i can't stand nursing homes. But recently i went & my parents brought her outside because it was nice out, & she said some of the things i wrote down. Mom & i were laughing & Grandma got kind of annoyed. At some point i said, "I feel bad," & mom said, "No; you have to laugh or you're going to scream."

Picasso at the Lapin Agile. I'm glad i found that whole bit that i wrote down online, because it was so striking & i never want to forget it.

Since i've become a sucker for fancy-ish drinks, i figured i ought to start comparing prices.

It helps to relieve a tiny bit of stress about the way things are headed to flip a shit in the sketchbook.

The thumbnail in the lower left is my only idea for the Word on the Street print, & after i took this picture, i wrote down a ton more stuff, thinking it through. I'm thinking i may not need to run it through a press, i could print it by hand, & maybe that would help the styrofoam "plate" a bit, because i'm worried about pressure squishing it & messing with the lines. Especially if i'm planning on doing it in color, which i think i might. The colors would be brown, green, & then black for the key (the drawing; although now that i think about it... the key might end up as every color, because of inking it & what i can & can't mask off). And since i'd need to do at least one test print before trying the actual print, that's another worry-about-squishing bit. And i think it's due soon, & so if this is all i can think of, i'm going to roll with it. It has despair, but also a teeny bit of hope, because those are budding tree branches around her (hence the green, & i think her hat will be green, too). What do you guys think? It is okay to put that hope in there, or should i make something more angry about the state of shit in this city? I know that sounds like a strange question, but should i incorporate hope when hope seems so far away in this country?

Let me draw your attention to the conversation i wrote down: Amanda is the teacher like i said; & she's a young woman. Eric is a student in the class & is a much older man.

Amanda: He draws angry phalluses & things.
Eric: Why are phalluses always angry?
Amanda: Well, these have little mouths & they're yelling. Sometimes they're on boats.

I HAD TO STIFLE MY LOLZ BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO BE MATURE BUT ASDFGJKLUYFDGHJHFCHJKJCVBNBVCX THEY'RE ON BOATS, MOTHERFUCKERS, & THEY'RE ANGRY i can't

I find these cut outs from working on the book sculpture really interesting. I remember, in Amanda's Advanced Drawing class, how one of the first classes was "make 40 drawings in this amount of time." It really forced you to loosen up, & to stretch what a drawing is. The idea that a drawing could be how you cut something out of a magazine, stuff like that. (There is a reason why people say drawing is the root of all art.) So i was looking at these yesterday & i'm like, these are just as interesting, inadvertently, as what i'm trying to say/do with the sculpture. They're like these odd drawings made with scissors.