Starting to get a backlog of etched plates now – which is great, but need to get down the print shop and start pulling proofs. Cutting Mat has arrived, now just need mount card, sticky labels designed and project Dave Sells Art is go :D
*Resource Request* C/O Production manager: More hours in the day please. Effective immediately. Kthanksbuhbye.
Back to school… Will’s Life Drawing class began again tonight at Bristol Grammar School so I get to break out the pencil crayons for another term. It always takes a while to get back in to the swing of things, working out the rusty hinges and all. Had a lot of fun spending the 2nd half of the session etching a single plate taking in four different poses. Looking forward to proofing this now I’ve had a bit more practise at the print process over summer. I’ve photoshopped out a rough test of what the prints should pull like, but you never can tell until you get your hands dirty down the studio.
Click thumbs below for full size images
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…
Click the thumbnails below for full size images – til next time…
All 15minute poses this week, so low volume of drawings. For some reason it all ended up going a bit mental! The first head worm of the new year makes an appearance alongside a raft of Dave-style distorted weirdness. Don’t ask me why, I just work here… :D
As ever click the thumbnails below for Full size images – enjoy the stupidity!
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 