Printing Up a Storm

I'm not really sure what that means, "up a storm", but it's what my grandmother would say when someone was going at something full-force, as in, "When you were a year old, you were just talking up a storm." I wonder where that came from, and is it an idiom?

Sorry, I'm wandering off course here, or, what my husband would call, "babbling". I do understand where that one came from, and it's a metaphor. I think. I've been working really hard this week, and I guess my brain is a little fried. I seem to be able only to speak in figurative language.

Anyway, I've been making monotypes (or some would say monoprints) for two days, not counting a whole day of preparation, which consisted of rearranging my studio, cleaning off the press and the dog crates and as many surfaces as I could to dry prints on, removing lots of artwork that was stored in boxes, finding my plexiglass plates and other equipment, etc.  That was Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday I printed, without breaks, from about 8:00 in the morning until 5:00 or so in the evening, without sitting down. My back was not at all happy about it.

 My drafting table, which is usually covered with carousels full of colored pencils, pens, and other tools, was pulled away from the wall, cleaned off, and used to hold the plexiglass plate and another piece to roll out and mix ink on. This wasn't nearly enough room to do what I needed to do, but I had to make do with what I had.

 Inks have been rolled out and colors have been mixed...
 

 I used some plants in my prints, just stuff I found in the yard, mostly weeds. It took a while to clean the ink off of everything, which is always the worst part...

My press was used as a press for a change, instead of a table where junk collects...

I don't have a drying rack, so every possible surface was cleared off to be used as space to dry prints...

... including the dog crates and drawers where I keep all kinds of ephemera...


Hopefully I will be showing you some finished products soon!

At last!

I finished it several days ago, but didn't have time to photograph until yesterday, and the mica is very difficult to photograph, so I had to do it again today. 

Here it is, parts to whole- sort of:

 

right  side

left side

detail of the spine (not too great; I'm going to have to fix this so the mica lays more flat against the paper)

the whole enchilada (no, that's not the title; any ideas?)

ingredients: vintage book cover (and other parts), vintage children's writing paper, vintage sewing pattern fragment, monotype, image transfers, mica, embroidery floss, tissue paper, ink jet prints, Caran D'ache crayons, watercolor pencils

techniques/methods: printed, cut, glued, drawn, stitched

In Progress

I thought I'd share with you the making of an artwork from start to finish... sort of. This is the third of my "The Traveler's Tale" series so far. This series is more narrative than my usual work, and is loosely based on the theme of the journey of life, both inner/mental/spiritual, and physical/temporal- not that these are by any means two separate things. I've always loved maps, and thought they were really beautiful; I've used them before in a few pieces, with interesting results. Here are a couple of examples:

Pathways of Remembrance

Dharma Mandala

For "The Traveler's Tale", I'm using maps as the dominant collage material. You can see the first one, "As the crow Flies", here. The second is finished, but has not yet been photographed; I'm just slow, lazy, too busy, or all of the above. Hopefully I'll get to that soon, if the weather cooperates.

After I have the general composition worked out in my head (I haven't done rough sketches for these because the exact composition depends too much on materials), the first thing I have to do is find the right background materials. This is really the most difficult part of the process, because the image in my head does not always coincide with available materials, so constant revisions are made as I try to come to the best compromise.

For instance, what's the overall size? If I have map pieces that fit, they may be the wrong color, or have the wrong "mood" for the piece. For example, a Cincinnati street map is not going to look right if the piece has a medieval theme. But how much can I splice parts of maps together without making it look too sloppy or visually confusing? For this one, I wanted the hill to be one map, if possible, so this greatly limited my choices, as I had only a few that were large enough. Color, of course, is another important factor.

I chose the map of British Columbia because it was the only light-colored one that was big enough. For the sky, I wanted to use part of an old monotype. It wasn't really big enough, though, so I knew I'd have to supplement it with something else- hopefully the blue ocean part of the map. So I fiddled and jiggled and moved things around approximately 2 or 3 hundred times, taping things in place with artist's tape (not supposed to tear the paper), and then moving them again. Too many variables!! Eventually I get tired of this and just decide to go with what I've got at this point.

So, I glued the map piece on. As you can imagine, gluing something so huge (the overall size is about 20 x 27) can be quite problematic. For pieces this large, I use Grafix double- tack mounting film, but great care must be taken because if you put it down in the wrong spot, that's where it stays! It's great, though, because there's no wrinkling. I also attached a couple of extra map pieces, such as the one I added at the top of the hill, to make it a little taller.

The monotype I used had a tree on it which overlapped the sky too much to make it feasibly removable, so I decided I'd have to keep it. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow, right? I cut around the part of the tree that extended below the sky, then glued the sky on using the same mounting film.


Next I brewed up a mixture of acrylic inks to stain the map an appropriate color. I rubbed this on with a rag that was formerly an old cotton t-shirt, and VOILA!

Here is the new piece, so far.

Tune in next time, when we venture into the exciting and dangerous realm of (dhunt-dhunt-DHUN) IMAGE TRANSFER!