This is better, I think

Well, I hope it's better, anyway. This is the version I'm going to transfer to the plate. I hope there isn't some glaring idiotic error in perspective that I haven't seen. Why can't I ever do anything the simple way?

Obsession : )

Since Friday, I've worked on the powerlines. I hope they're closer to correct now. You can see the new version here: http://lynettesartblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/this-is-better-i-think.html

Today's IF challenge is obsession. I'm not a very obsessed person, except when it comes to artwork and getting it right. Currently, I am obsessing about those darned power lines. I always think my drawings will be easy, but then I end up setting very complex problems for myself. I want to have this drawn on the plate before I go to art camp. If all goes well, this will end up as a color litho using the pochoir method of printing, ala Mucha. If anybody has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Pochoir

I'm telling you, synchronous events keep happening. I was very lucky to see the Mucha exhibit in Taipei this month. It was an enormous, wonderful display of his lithos. I had my craft eyes on, and I didn't see any mistakes. Mucha was a master draftsman, and I don't know if he did his own lithos, but that work was very fine, too. I just found out today that the technique (I think) that Mucha used was a stencil method called pochoir. And guess what? In the course catalog for my upcoming class the description says it will cover "hand stencil techniques". I'd bet anything that pochoir is one of those techniques. This is the drawing I'm planning to use. Now that I see it on screen, I'll need to change a few things before I transfer it to a plate, and if you can't tell, there will be reflections of power lines in her eyes, and I'm thinking about maybe shadows of the lines across her face, but I'm not sure. The piece is called Cicada. It goes with the power lines, I swear.

POSCO

The world is so synchronous sometimes. Last year while traveling in Korea, I stumbled upon a printmaking workshop in the basement of the Busan Museum of Modern Art. The workshop was being presented by the POSCO company, a major steel company in Korea. The purpose was to foster creativity in this employee group. Today, POSCO was mentioned in a conversation on Facebook as a driving positive force in S. Korea. I figure, if they think to do things like cultivate creativity through printmaking, they can't be all bad. I wonder if they'd be interested in making an inexpensive but quality version of my plates. I spend a fortune on those!

More experimenting

I haven't posted to Illustration Friday for a while, and yesterday, the prompt was gesture. Because I am still shaking off jet lag, I was in my studio late last night and decided to try some monoprints for the first time. I'm on a bit of a mission to try as many techniques as I can before I'm done with grad school, and this was on my list. I also think this will be a nice technique to share with my students in the fall. So here are the two prints I made at 2:00am this morning. The lighter one is a doctored ghost image from the first print. As far as the prompt goes, the duckling isn't gesturing, but the images are gestural in nature.

Home again

I just got home from a nice trip in Asia, where I saw some wonderful sights as well as some excellent art. This time, I was able to see both Shanghai and Taiwan. That was great because I had just read Shanghai Girls, the sequel to Snowflower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, in which the action starts in Shanghai before the Communist Revolution and refers to Chiang Kai Shek and his opposition to Mao. I had no idea that the Chinese people were persecuted as much as the Japanese were in the '50's. Seeing those two cities gave me a "before and after" look at the Chinese. I have to say though, that the view on the Bund in Shanghai rivals any city view I've ever seen. Taiwan had the best art, though.

I also got to see Transformers 3 in 4D, which was amazing. And I saw a good Korean flick called Hello Ghost. I recommend both.

Anyway, I didn't do a lick of work while I was away, even though I had a drawing with me to work on. I was bugged by the missing toes in the Dreamer quilt, and the only thing I did was to mull over how to fix that. I think I figured it out.

So now, it's on to printing, coloring and sewing the tessellation and quilting the rest of it. I'm also going to work on some plates to get ready for summer camp : )

It's nice to be back in the cool green of Michigan.