Art of Democracy Show coming up

Detail from "Sweet Land of Liberty"
Monotype, © 2012 Elana Goren

In November, Sacred Galley NYC will exhibit "Art of Democracy," a show curated by Marshall Arisman, a very well-known illustrator and printmaker who heads the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program at the School of Visual Arts in NY. Marshall was one of the first contemporary illustrators to blur the line between illustration and fine art, succeeding in bringing a fine art aesthetic to alot of his illustration work. He is an artist that I have looked up to since my early college years and have been inspired by since. I am honored to have my work included in an exhibition that he is curating.

The work pictured above is a detail of the monotype that will be included in the show. Please stop by the Sacred Gallery for the opening on November 3, 8pm - 11pm. "Art of Democracy" runs from November 3 until November 30.

For show info, visit the Sacred Gallery website.

Silk Aquatint

I just took a silk aquatint workshop with Kathy Caraccio and it was a great experience. The technique uses only water-based mediums to create the plate and was printed with Faust AquaLine water-soluable inks. It was great fun and a more eco-friendly and inexpensive alternate to traditional aquatint techniques. I should say though, the results of working on this kind of plate differ greatly from the effects you get with traditional aquatints. It will be interesting for me to experiment with this technique and see what I can do with it when I find the time to do so.

The image above is a 15" x 20" plate that I made in the workshop. Kathy says that up to 250 impressions can be made with this type of plate. I plan to experiment with ink colors and transparencies to get the most out of the grey tones from the plate.

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.