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
Tag Archives: plate
Print Collection 13-07-11
Just picked up my 1st edition. I’m posting up all 8 of the prints I collected today so you can see the variation print-to-print. I’m bloody knackered. Spent all day today at the print studio editioning the next plate. I’d forgotten how tiring it is to be stood up all day. Didn’t go so well print-wise which is a bit annoying. It takes ages to work up the plate for each print and so much can wrong at any stage. I’m sure its just practise, but its so gutting seeing the prints turn out bad after spending so long inking and working the plate. Heh ho, its all part of the game…
Its difficult to see the difference because of the slightly shonky photography, but if you look at the areas such as the legs at the bottom of the plate or the black around the face you can see the variation. Click the thumbs below 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:
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 ;)
Dry Point Etching and Intaglio Printing 05-04-11
Managed to crank out 8 prints in tonights 3 hr print sesh which is pretty good going. Starting to get my head round things much more – even started only using the good (read: expensive) paper. Still very much learning though, learnt tonight that if you press hard when intially inking up the plates you scratch the surface as aluminium is so soft – so I’ve basically damaged some of my most successful plates… but thats learning. Just 2 photos from the prints I collected from tonight – the first one is on cheaper paper and as this plate was one of my initial sketchbook replication tests the line is very light and weak:
The 2nd one is on the good quality paper (Somerset Satin) and as well as that I quickly re-worked the line, tracing over it again with an engineers scribe to dig a fresh new line in the plate:
You can see that the line is a lot stronger and more defined. Still trying to work out how many prints I’ll get in an edition, I reckon only about 8 – but if I re-work the line, I’m not sure… and even less sure if this is the right thing to do. Looking forward to collecting the prints next week as that will mean I’ve got artists proofs of all the plates that I’ve produced to date, so I can begin to build editions from my favourite ones. Exciting :D
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 