slightly wonky

I received a phonecall this week, telling me that the class that I had been SO looking forward to is going to be cancelled for low enrollment.  WHAT?  Am I the only person who was interested in doing huge woodcuts?  I highly doubt that.  Needless to say, I am really disappointed.  This has happened to me before, and it’s always a big bummer.  I suggested that perhaps the artist could do a one day workshop.  I was told that I needed to speak to someone else about that.  Sigh.

I don’t have class tonight, as it’s vacation week.  So instead, I tried to work on carborundum collagraphs in the spirit of the work that my teacher does.  Hmm.  It’s much harder than it looks (of course).  One of the challenges of printmaking with transparent inks is that you have to have a good sense of what the print will look like with each layer that you add.  Layers of printing on top of another can bring depth and interest into the print.  It can also make your print a muddy mess.  My teacher makes this layering look easy.  My work today seemed to only be marginally successful.  I worked on these next two prints simultaneously:

and this one:

You can see that they have many similar elements.  I’m fairly content with the first one, but the second one still makes me think that it needs something.  The risk, of course, is that I do another layer and say, “nooooo! It was better BEFORE!!!!”  This is typically why you should sort of leave your prints alone, and get back to them again with fresh eyes.

Here are other ones that I did:

The background is actually slightly “greenish”, which I don’t think comes through with this photo.  Can you tell that I liked that blob?  It keeps appearing…

This one is another that is borderline for me…add another layer?  Keep it as is?

Then, I tried doing two plates together.  This is harder to do (for me):

I like how this one turned out.  I’m not sure if each print individually would have been interesting, but together I’m happy with it.  Apparently, there are new colors for these inks coming out.  Exciting!!!

And now for something completely different…I’ve also been working on a lino print.  This has taken ages.   I have done it in a few color schemes.  This is the “green” scheme:

Kind of odd, I know.  I like it, though.  I like the boldness of relief printing.  THUS, my serious disappointment with my cancelled class.  Yes, I’m whining about that again.  Yes, I’ll give it a rest.  So, any comments?  No…not about my CLASS…about the prints!  (I can hear you playing your tiny violin for me…stop it!)  :p