Last session of term tonight, 1 hour of warm ups then 45 mins of etching goodness. New term starts again on Jan 19th. In the mean time I’m gonna start digging back through the archives and posting choice nuggets of scribbly goodness. I’ve got a good set of plates ready to go to print but no time to do the work… lets see if we can get that changed :D
Tag Archives: aluminium
Life Drawing 17-11-11
Its been two weeks since the last life class and I haven’t had a chance to scan any old work, so I’m feeling a bit rusty and this place is starting to collect tumbleweed… but I’m back with a new selection of pics from tonight’s class :D
15 minute poses all night tonight so just a few images. Had fun doing a quick portrait for the last pose which was nice. I tend not to do this sort of thing very often as its a bit too close to my comfort zone and I like to keep it a bit more challenging with the line work
Tartan Drypoint Etching
Its a bit frustrating fighting with tone inking up plates so I decided to have a play with using marks to make tone rather than doing it all at the print stage. I didn’t really intend to end up with this tartan type pattern, but that’s what popped out. I’ve no idea what it’ll actually look like printed, I’ve tried to quickly mock it up but the proof of the pudding will be in the pulling…
Click Thumbs for full size images
20 prints ready to be framed and wrapped for sale
Finally got round to choosing prints that make the grade from the few editions I’ve pulled to date. 13 of the prints you see here will be available to buy in the very near future. 4 of the remainder have made it to the framery to get fitted with their Sunday best ready for my walls and galleries. I’ve also been producing a number of new original inkings testing out a smaller format, more on that to follow…
Click thumbs for larger images
Drypoint Etching Macro Photography
Now the sun is shining I decided to take advantage of the natural light and take some photos of some of my most successful prints. I’ve also started work on another edition of original inkings which I will post next week. Its getting very close to my wedding now so I won’t be posting much for the next month or so. I’ve very much caught the art bug again and it doesn’t look like its going to go away this time.
Click thumbs for larger images:
Life Drawing 26-05-11
Good session tonight, arm bloody hurts though – curse you booster jabs! Happy with what was produced. This is probably my last session… blimey, until September then. Bugger. Heh ho. Lots of time to work on inking editions (more on this tomorrow ;) exciting! Here’s the pics from tonight:
Click thumbs below for larger images
Life Drawing 12-05-11 Welcome to Worm Country…
Its all gone a bit weird…! :D In the spirit of embracing the madness, this is worm country. Here be dragons. Well, worms. Here be worms. Head worms! glorious glistening, palpating mental appendages reaching for the cosmos. For your pleasure. I had a fun session tonight. Then I went to see the ace Dylan Shipley’s first solo exhibition at the newly moved Weapon of Choice gallery on the way home, which was great – nice Dyl, shit looking fly ;) props dude.
Gonna be fun pulling prints of these puppies ;) Click the thumbs for full screen versions…
Drypoint Etching and Intaglio Printing 26-04-11
Getting into the process now which is all good. Enjoying playing with getting as much tone on to the plate as possible and working the highlights in with an earbud. Its all gloriously low-tech :D The 2 images here show that each print is very different – you never know what you’re gonna get. The idea of an artist’s proof just doesn’t apply yet…
I’ll save you the trouble of having to click thumbnails this time ;)
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.)
For full screen versions, please click the thumbnails below…
Life Drawing 20_01_11
It begins! :D
Had a really weak session (IMO anyways…) on the standard drawing front this week – but I think that’s in no small part due to the fact that I was itching to get on and try my hand at dry-point etching live at Life Class! :D – Its exactly how I hoped it would be, I’ve already caught the bug… Here’s my very first ever proper etching from life:
Apparently Aluminium plates are the thing to use for dry-point etching, not copper plates like I expected. Maybe its cost, maybe its an easier material to work with, who knows does the job tho! I was very pleased with how the 2nd one also turned out:
Cool beans! I’m going to enjoy this etching lark :D I couldn’t resist having a little play in photoshop to give an idea of what a print from the image will look like, so I tweaked the levels for contrast, reversed it out to a negative image and flipped horizontally:
Cool! Its always a bit odd looking at the mirror image of something that was drawn ‘the right way round’, but heh ho, there’s no way round that if you are etching from life and straight to print. I’ll be using some of the images that I have been previously testing to see what happens over the weekend when I try to etch plates from drawings that are pre-reversed out so the final print is the right way round.
So, I’d say that was a successful first run – all systems go for project print the shit out of everything! Here’s the other sketchbook images from tonight for posterity:
And as usual click the images for full screen versions and use the arrows top and bottom of the screen to navigate (apologies for repetition of the prints, not sure how to selectively display images in slideshows and galleries…) – til next time… :D
Dave Cropley 