Alas, poor Yorick!

Print 'o the day today- available in the etsy shop here. Oh, it is becoming so addicting.

Sombrero de Copa

Oh, yes yes yes, I am a printing fiend. Etsy shop is here, garage studio calls my name, I will continue trying to toss pieces up on here with somewhat regularity.

Katie

Oh man, I have disappeared from blogging, but it's only been because I'm overflowing with screenprinting ideas and I'm pretty much in my studio degreasing and prepping screens like a fiend. Also, it's summer which means work and gigs and adventures and excellent people coming to visit, like my lovely friend Katie who I convinced to sit for a quickie sketch this morning. I'd like to do a sketch of everyone who comes to visit me during the summer so I can have a gallery of the fucking awesome people who populate my life. Plus then my art gets to travel all over the place with the people who're in it- a double plus win.

Forgiveness and studio shots

Three days sans art posts! Believe me when I say that I am the soul of humility and contrition. But in my defense, I turned 21 on the 12th, and we're in the midst of Evergreen's graduation, of which three of my housemates partook. There's been excessive cooking and outings and parties and heavy, heavy drinking many nights in a row. Less time for art than usual, although my life'll no doubt empty out next week and I'll be producing work at a stupid rate yet again out of summer ennui and my emotional failings.

To make up for it, here's a shot of my newly organized studio space! I spent today re-doing my walls, which are crammed full of as much art as I can fit on them. I like to keep lots of figure studies around my easel for reference, but it was getting up the three layers of paper and ridiculousness. It's more nicely spread out now.

Note that all my supplies are crammed on a tiny two inch wide shelf jutting out of the wall. It's a pain in the ass it's a good way to make sure my space doesn't get too cluttered!

Shower

Blatant lies from yesterday about putting up the fishey prints- for some reason all I felt like today was watercolor. Nice, attention consuming, detail oriented, watercolor. Didn't feel like asking anyone around to get naked for me, so I pulled a picture of myself from a recent photoshoot for reference.

I love the aesthetic of detailed, soft shading and hard graphic lines- but I really haven't got the feel for it yet. I struggled with those stupid swirls for way too long.

My page of sketches before I got into my piece. Pencil lines and watercolor for some reason just appeal to me implicitly. It's gotta be the illustrative quality.

Speaking of, Terrible Yellow Eyes has me pumped up on inspiration on a daily basis. Check it out- all gorgeous work based on Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are".

Fishehes, parts two and three

The second part of making my fish screen, coming up with the next layer. I was thinking in terms of bubbles, and came up with a cityscape silhouette. If you look closely, and share my linguistic geekery, you'll see where I hid the cyrillic letters for fish in the buildings.

And because I was a failure at posting yesterday, here's the transparency I drew from my original ink sketch (photographing plastic- less than easy). I also burned the screen today, although the emulsion didn't harden quite enough and I wound up with a little haze trying to wash out. I made a new drying area (cardboard box with a fan propped up) but I only left it for an hour or so which I think was the problem. If I was anything less than supremely lazy, I'd walk the ten feet to my garage and throw a picture of it up, but as it is y'all can see it tomorrow when I pull the first prints.

I get a lot out of serigraphy, but every time I burn a screen I feel like there's so much more I could be doing design wise. I haven't put any of my screens to fabric yet because I don't feel like they're good enough. Luckily my technical skills are improving every time I pull together a print, and with luck by the time my designs are satisfying I'll have the ability to print them tightly.

Fisheh!

Serigraphy concept art o' the day. I'm thinking 3 layers for this one (ambitious after having only pulled one single layer print thus far, I know) to get the shading just right. It also needs something stylized to represent its environment, I'm thinking about throwing a circle around it and calling it a bubble to match the ones coming out of it's mouth.

Shit, do I love me some fishies.

Beauty in Madness Print

First print I pulled of Beauty in Madness, on (slightly splotchy) newsprint. Accounting for some rough spots, this is the best print I've pulled in my personal studio since I set it up. On a handstretched screen I made out of a picture frame and some old curtains, no less.

New emulsion (not Speedball, mercifully- overpriced crap), paint pens, better pressure on the screen- all things I know now are necessary for a good wash out. I'm really pleased with this, although I might try drawing fluid on the text to make it legible. The linocut effect from the fine pen is a nice surprise too.

I need: a better space at hip height to pull from. I made the same mistake I did in the campus studio and let the ink dry on the screen too quickly before I managed to pull more than 3 prints.

Next step: LAYERS.

EBH status: Oddly okay thanks to acrobatics and the physicality of working on screens. Then- surprise pitfall!

Beauty in Madness

I HAVE PAINT PENS.

This is a transparency I just put together (see the nifty shadows?) with my new screens in mind. All my serigraphy ideas lately tend to deal with madness, probably because I'm drawing on Fly as inspiration. And y'know, crazy brain.

Emotional blackhole status: massively on edge and twitchy.

Emotional blackhole

Six minutes past deadline, but this blackhole opened up under my feet and kept me from doing most anything.

Super Fucking Art Star

Super Fucking Art Star!

Super Fucking Art Star cleaned the studio, hung her pieces for the gallery show, wrote a damn good artist statement, and survived the last critique of the year. Super Fucking Art Star still has to write an evaluation and put up a gallery of work online, but could care less about that crap right now.

Super Fucking Art Star has not slept properly in a long time.

Just a knock-off chalk pastel piece to try to get back into the hang of doing work for myself. I REALLY want to play with my new screens, but I pushed art-brain too far in the wrong direction and I can't come up with non-pastel ideas for the moment.

Emotional blackhole status: fighting this shit till the bitter end.

Cirk du Akro!

Final Cirk du Fantastik poster, and a bit of a lie because hell of any of us can do this move. Artistic libertie!

I really need to clean up the shading on the body, I'm having trouble getting it just right and giving the form dimension. I'll mess with it a bit before I go crash, we're hanging the show tomorrow and I need it to resemble a final product.

I started dolling up my studio space to prep for the show today with bombastic circus-y drawings and silliness on butcher paper- "Ladies and Gentlemen, for your viewing ediafication, a never-before-seen peek backstage into the...DUALITY OF SELF" reads the placard on the side. More cleverness to be added as it comes to me.

Emotional blackhole status: My brain hates to see me succeed. I fight it with doin' awesome shit!