Life Drawing 31-03-11

Interesting session tonight, very rusty after a couple of weeks away, but I remembered my learnings from last time and had a good warm up for 1/2 hour in the sketchbook with 5 min poses before diving in to the etchings. Seems like this is a good way to approach the 2 hour sessions – you get half a dozen warm up sketches and around 4 plates, more than enough to keep stocks up for print runs. This was also the last session of the term, so no more new drawings until the end of April – lots of time for playing with print!

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As always, click the thumbnails for Full Size images… :D

Dry Point Etching and Intaglio Printing 29-03-11

Just picked these up from the print workshop after being away for a couple of weeks. Interesting to see the range of styles and success (or not!) of the printing. Spent last nights session running out an edition from one plate to see how many prints I can get from the aluminium before they get too light – looks like I can only get about 1/2 a dozen before the main lines will need to be re-worked or shelved. Here’s some cheeky photos of the tests I picked up…

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As ever, click the thumbnails below for full screen images. tiddly pip!

Snowboarding Val D’Isere Panoramas

Found some great free photo stitching software here: Autostitch = Win

Stitched this last one by hand from 2 photos, software only works for multiple images.

Sigh. Little slices of bliss :D Click the images for full HD view….

Snowboarding Val D’Isere March 2011

Had to post this – Happy Dave’s! :D

Stitched 2 source photographs together by hand in Photoshop to make this little slice of heaven :D Click the photo for full HD view…

Classic Life Drawing 17-03-11

So the project continues… so many drawings, here’s some more!

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Click the thumbnails below for full size images – pip pip :D

Dry Point Etching and Intaglio Printing 15-03-11

Last printing session for 2 weeks as I’m away throwing myself down a mountain in France next week. Starting to feel like I’m getting my head round this whole Intaglio printing lark. Its all practise, practise, practise, but its starting to make sense. I managed to pull 7 prints from the 7 plates I etched at life class last week – took 3 hours to do that, and I wasn’t dilly-dallying. When up to speed it takes about 20-25mins from start to finish per print. yipes. Not a quick process. I’ve photographed the 4 prints from last week and 2 from the week before and posted here so you can see how I’m getting on. Its a bit of a gip that the paper is a bit too big to scan so the images aren’t ideal – but you get the idea…

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Click the thumbnails below for full size Images. I’m looking forward to collecting the prints that I pulled tonight – there were a couple that turned out real well. I’ll share when I’m back!

artist proof

dry point etched intaglio print

Life Drawing 10-03-11

Etch-stravaganza! Tonight I tried drypoint etching for the entire 2 hour session, in retrospect I should have spent some time warming up in the sketchbook first instead rushing headlong into the main course, but in for a penny in for a pound. I’ve scanned the plates and also uploaded photoshopped mockups of what the prints may look like, but in the real world It’ll be weeks before I get to see what the prints from this session will look like – kinda exciting! Anyways, here’s what came out of tonight – I tried to cram in as many styles as I could from quick sketches to multi-pose stuff. For some reason the last one wouldn’t scan properly so I’ve just left it as is…

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Click the thumbnails below for full size images – til next time…

Dry Point Etching and Intaglio Printing 08-03-11

Almost didn’t get to print anything tonight as there was a powercut that took out a big chunk of South Bristol – but I got there in the end. I’ll post a couple of pictures of the prints that I collected tonight now they are fully dry, but for now here’s some shots that I took during the print process, its a bit of a mish-mash at different stages in the process but interesting none-the-less

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Click the thumbnails below for full screen images, pip pip!

Life Drawing 03-03-11

Interesting session tonight! Lots of lessons learnt – No.1, bring more plates! Not dinner plates, but aluminium ones for etching! The sketchbook work tonight didn’t feel too successful, but that’s mainly because I was trying to warm up for the drypoint etching main course. I’m heartened indeed. One of the main reasons I love drawing so much is because it physically feels nice to make marks on paper, its always been a big draw for me (no pun intended). But this whole etching lark feels great, its like sculpting – but 2D! Its an entirely different feeling to my previous medium of choice (black crayon on paper), but really satisfying, digging a sharp point around a sheet of soft metal. But I digress – here’s the images from tonight… I’ve taken the liberty of photoshopping the scanned plates to mock up how they will look printed, that’s why there’s 2 versions – a straight scan of the plate and a flipped, reversed out test: (edit – doh! forgot to flip some of the tests, heh ho.)

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For full screen versions, please click the thumbnails below…

Dry Point Etching and Intaglio Printing 01_03_11

Finally started at Spike Print this evening so I thought I’d take a few shots while I was working away. Its a slow process at the moment while I’m finding my feet, but its kinda fun. Only managed to produce two prints in as many hours which are drying as I type…

(If you look closely you can see one of my plates on the press to the left…)

So, here’s a few photos of the process, from an inky plate to nice clean print…