today I went on an etching / print workshop at the ownership project gallery / print room in melbourne. learnt a lot. i made some prints to try different techniques, levels of colour depth, plate cleanup, colours, timings. used one of my bee drawings so I can add them to my theme work. falling in love with printing. you can get some very detailed marks with etching (with practice!)
i’ll add more pics / steps later when on the computer
this weekend I’ve been trying to catch up on my printing for assignment 2 ACA. but was “distracted” by doing some online classes of Carla Sonheim’s. one was a gelli plate printing class, so I’m waiting for my gelli plate to arrive. will try similar on other makeshift plates during the week (am home with my materials for a couple of weeks). the other one was a watercolour transfer class. these are some of the watercolour painted tshirt transfer papers so far. the work is still in progress…waiting for it to dry properly then add some other media, then do/test the prints onto paper & fabric. the watercolours react nicely to the coating on the paper. I hadn’t tried this before. Carla does some amazing work – I’ve been really inspired and hope that one will turn out as nice as hers (one day). I’ve signed up for her ‘imaginary creatures’ class that’s running this week also and have started reading her books (the kindle ones). the book speaks about footpath/cracks animals. I took some photos of water splotches on the footpath near home and I can really see some imaginary animals in them so hoping I can turn them into little prints for my niece & cousins kids. maybe a little zine of them. not sure yet. (I’ve taken pics like this in the path, often of the outline that a stray hair makes on the bathroom floor – my hair is long and straight but tends to make curvy shapes as it falls out). I can really relate to her opening section of the imaginary animals (blobimals) book where she mentions she loves animals. and came late to making / studying art in her life (she was 30, I am older, but similar circumstances).
this one looks a little “busy” – I’ll see how it is once I have to cut it up
this one looks like a piglet to me:
& this one – I’m happy with the lightness of/amount of water in the watercolour – usually I think I’m too heavy handed with watercolour so I’m practicing to water it down more. getting there.
we had do make some abstract shapes using patterns and a couple of ‘landscape’ type images.
yesterday, we went to the Piranesi exhibition at the State Library of Victoria. his work was amazing! such fine detail in his etchings and prints. there were around 100 works on display, but i found that I was transfixed by the close-up detail of his mark making in the works. when he was younger, the prints were lighter and later in his life he ran his own printmaking business and developed darker, denser prints of imaginative buildings, street scenes and maps. the exhibition included his visions of Rome etchings. most of the buildings did not actually exist outside his mind and works — they are imaginary buildings and cities. he showed amazing skill with depth of vision, fine detail in the clouds and architectural designs and showing darkness and light in the images. Giovanni Battista Piranesi lived from 1720-1778. a statement reported by one of his early biographers, via his Met Museum article shows his love for imaginary architecture:
“I need to produce great ideas, and I believe that if I were commissioned to design a new universe, I would be mad enough to undertake it.”
I tried drawing some of the marks in my notebook but found the pen i was using didn’t give me enough variation in the lightness and darkness of the lines.
I bought a copy of the book to look more closely at his lines and marks later. I’m afraid i didn’t notice all of the individual pictures from far away – I was too busy concentrating on a few of them close up. his mark making style was similar for most of his earlier and later works, but the large map that was printed onto the foyer outside the exhibition is of a more modern, draftsman drawing style.
the article in the paper about the exhibition mentioned that most of Piranesi’s works are held by libraries, rather than galleries. this is an interesting comment – perhaps due to his printing background, his works are highly regarded by printed works specialists. architects also study his works.
explorations in textiles, mark making, drawing, sketchbooks, art school & uni art work