Sketching at the Farm

I've been going to the local farm alot lately sketching new subjects and compositions for upcoming work. It's an exciting time there now since it seems all the animals have had children and these babes are running all over the place.

And I love to visit the donkeys who are always so expressive in their body language and are usually pretty active. The larger of the two donkeys walked over to a spot in front of me and plopped down on the ground there. He then put his head down and looked at me in a way that was reminiscent of the way my dog lies down and watches me to see what I'm going to do next. It's an endearing pose and I was inspired to capture it in this sketch.

Usually I use Micron pens and watercolor since that is the most portable but lately I've been using pen and ink for sketching. It's not as convenient to schlep the ink bottles and pen nibs/handles but I love the feel of the pen tip gliding on the paper with very little drag. The Micron pens don't move as smoothly on the paper.

Experimenting with Monoprinting

Sorry for the temporary lapse in posting here, folks. Tons of crazy and frantic stuff going on in Spider Ink land. I just finished designing and organizing the production of a new building sign for Brown Street Studios where I have my studio in Peekskill. I think it's going to look great once it's up, hanging under it's bracket, but alot of work went into getting the town permits as well as the color-corrected printout which is being used for our sign.

After being laid up with a bad back, I'm about to move to a bigger studio (my back is groaning at the thought) and get it ready for Peekskill Open Studios on June 6. I'm also going to teach a new etching class which I am looking forward to but has required alot of preparation and set-up since it's the first time in a long while that this class is being offered at the Garrison Art Center. Added to work and my other daily obligations, it's been pretty hectic and stressful. To pile on, my mom's in critical condition in the hospital. It's alot of physically and emotionally draining stuff, but the art helps keep me focused and navigates me back when I'm feeling lost and overwhelmed. So, in my quest to keep my restless and worried mind occupied, I started experimenting with monoprinting.


It's kind of fun and frustrating, spontaneous and deliberate, versatile and rigid. All the contradictory combinations that make experimenting with it seem like you'll get somewhere if you keep at it. I need to practice a bit but the print above is an initial attempt. It kind of forces me to be less detailed, more general in my rendering. I used the edge of the brayer to render the contour lines so I didn't have as much control as I would using a brush. But I like the line that the brayer makes. The energy of the rendering almost feels like it's moving since multiple lines run over each other and the mixture of positive and negative contour lines has potential in my mind.


I also printed a ghost (second, lighter) print of the lamb and decided to "paint" over it with oil sticks. The oil sticks were easier for me to make direct marks than the brayer edge and I was able to add more detail. The added control tightened up the drawing somewhat and I'm not sure that's really what I wanted to do. I always seem to gravitate in that direction, though. Additionally, the oil sticks are really too oily for this purpose and the oil seeped through the paper. What do you think? Any suggestions about working over a print to enhance it? This inquiring mind would love to know.

UPDATE: Here's the reference photo. He's got such personality, I find him irresistible. But as always, I worry for his future. It can't be good being an animal on a farm.

Multiple Plates

I've been playing around with multiple-plate etchings and it's an interesting process that yields interesting results. There are many printmakers that use this process to register intricate work with aquatints, overlaying color fields to create new colors from the overlapping colors.

For me this process is a way to experiment with multiple plates each done with a different etching technique, to yield overlapping and varied textures rather than focusing on complex color mixing. The print above was created with 2 spitbite plates and a softground key plate. I like the effect of the spitbite with the linear drawing of the softground plate.

As usual, printmaking leads me on paths to all kinds of experimentation and sometimes I wonder if I will end up settling on one technique for all my work. But, I hope not.

Working through it

There's been alot of things going on in Spider Ink land and it's been tough to squeeze everything I want and need to do in between everything I have to do. Sometimes when the schedule gets crazy like this I have to find a way to carve time out when I can just create in the studio and shut everything else out for a while. The problem is that my muse doesn't always show up on schedule and the creative juices that were flowing freely one day might not be there the next when I've got the time to do my artwork. So what's an artist to do? Well, as a good friend advised me, you've got to just work through it.

My way of working through my creative slumps is to take a huge sheet of paper and do a large charcoal drawing or sketch. Standing at an easel in front of a 3 foot piece of paper helps loosen my arm and I use my whole upper body to move and create the marks on the page. It gives me an uninhibited freedom to get the ideas flowing again. And the charcoal never ceases to make beautiful and interesting marks. It works like magic on me, I feel transformed and back in the "groove" again.

The reclining sheep above was one such drawing. I have since used this drawing to make a soft ground etching which I will post later once I have the print finished. I'm planning to make it a 2-plate print and I'm very excited about how this is turning out so far. In my future related post I plan to discuss my process in creating the 2-plate print using soft-ground and spit-bite.

Pronto plates and Z-Acryl

A friend of mine, fellow painter and printmaker, Kevin Kall, sent this link to me and I thought I'd share. There is a wonderful video demonstration by Mirka H showing printing process with a Z-Acryl plate. I just wish there was a closeup image of the final prints made. I am curious about this process since it allows one to make lithographic prints on an etching press and with a lot less complexity in preparing the plate then with traditional lithography. I haven't tried this myself but I'd be interested if anyone who has would like to leave a comment and/or more links related to this process.

Etching techniques that I like: Part III (or yet another use for the litho crayon)

For this Hudson River landscape, I used a technique that Bruce Waldman (check out Amie Roman's great post on Bruce over at Burnishings) showed me that involves drawing with a litho crayon directly onto the plate (without a ground coating). The plate is then open bit and the image comes through the texture of the crayon's marks.

As I've said before, I love the freedom and freshness of the mark that comes from using a litho crayon. It is conducive to creating bold and loosely drawn images that have been traditionally uncharactistic of etching printmaking. I find it especially useful when drawing landscapes where the subjects don't require too much detail and can benefit from the "life" of the line.

Etching techniques that I like-Part II

I don't believe that I've discussed soft-ground techniques before, but it's fast becoming one of my favorite ways to etch a plate. I've spoken about the use of litho crayons in etching in a previous post as well as my penchant for sketching and I'd like to expound further on how useful I find litho crayons (and pencils) to be on a soft-ground plate. The above etching was created that way. Though it's rough and I will be working further on this plate and will add color, I like the way the freshness of the line and the immediacy of sketchwork is evident. And using a zinc plate can make a "dirtier" print than a copper plate which also adds to the feeling of a rough sketch.

The way I created the plate is that I drew the image on vellum while it was on a zinc plate so that the litho crayon's marks would be seen in the exposed parts of the plate when etched. I love the freedom of line and the variety of tone that the litho crayon yields when drawing with it. It allows me to "sketch" on a plate more expressively than when I use other tools for that purpose. I also find that if I decide to aquatint the plate in the next stage and fill in subjects with tones, the outlines disappear and the effect is more seamless looking.

I'd love to hear from people who use tools in the etching process that were designed for another purpose entirely. I am such a fan of experimenting with different acid resists and ways to manipulate the process to yield results that are unusual for etching prints. I'm experimenting right now with sharpies as an acid resist and I hope to post more about that soon.