Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Digital Collages

A while back I made some large scale digital collages...They are all 42" x 56" or 56" x 42" Archival Inkjet Prints on Epson Premium Luster Photo Paper.  Check em out!
 "Giving Up The Ghost"
 "Hell At Last, Yawning, Received Them Whole"
 "Me Miserable! Infinite Wrath And Infinite Despair"
 "That Seem'd Things Dead And Dead Again"
 "Nor Only Tears Rained At Their Eyes"
 "Carry Me Out Of The Host, For I Am Wounded"
 "Murmuring, And With Him Fled The Shades Of Night"
 "Can These Bones Live?"
 "We Are Sold, To Be Slain, To Be Destroyed, And To Perish"
 "Lost From The Genuine Path"
 "Flood Overwhelmed, And Them With All Their Pomp"
 "The Judge"
"Lost From The Genuine Path 2"

Friday, July 12, 2013

Gigantic Litho....The color runs...almost done.

The last in progress shot of this print was the black and white "key" printed.  It was a 10 hour day of printing.  My good buddy Wes helped me pull an edition of 35 prints. This is where I left off...
  I've been working for about 2 weeks now getting all the color printed.  The print is almost finished with only two more colors to go...check it out...

I ignored my instincts to print from light to dark when I started the color which turned out to be a pretty big mistake.  Printing light to dark prevents any offset ink from contaminating the next color.  I started with this orange which caused quite a few issues when returning to print later lighter colors.  DON'T DO WHAT I DID...print light to dark.  Here is the first color layer...Orange.
 As you can see...the second color was this grey/cream color...the offset of the previous orange layers was a big problem...I had to clean my ink slab ever 5 prints or so as the orange ink infiltrated my grey/cream color turning it into a muddy mess.
 The third color was kind of a gross green for the upper portion of the image and the outside of the cloak on the figure.
 The fourth color was a second gross green which filled the inside of the cloak and overlapped the green at the top to create the rays of light from the halo.
 Next was a yellow layer for the inside of the halo and a skin tone for the hands.  These two areas of color were far enough away from each other on the plate that i was able to ink and print them simultaneously... which saved me a whole day of printing.
 The second to last color was 2 reds printed from a photo plate.  The vultures head was drawn on frosted mylar while the flats were adhered to the same mylar using rubylith lightfast film.  A blend from dark red to red fills in the background overlapping the orange and the rendering of the vulture head adds detail and texture.
 The final color will be a brown printed from a photo plate.  The rendered color layer will be drawn on frosted mylar and will cover nearly the entire image.  This layer will fill in the clothing, parts of the head, hands and background and will serve to pull all the separate color flats together for a more cohesive final print.  I'll be sure to post the final print when it is finished...but for now...here are some shots of the rigorous printing process for some of the colors.




Stay tuned for the final version...should be done in the next few days.

Friday, June 28, 2013

GIGANTIC LITHOGRAPH

What was I Thinking...I just began work on a humongous lithograph...28" x 42"...Here we go...

Gonna need a bunch of these...














This is the black and white image printed on Somerset Satin paper...now I have the daunting task of filling this bad boy with color...wish me luck.

Back to the Mezzotints!

So after my adventures in lithography I have come back to the mezzotint world.  Only now...I want color!  I took what I was doing with my lithographs and found a way to get a similar result with my mezzotints...I began to Chine-collé photo litho elements into my mezzotint/aquatints...Check em out...

Here are some of the four color process photo litho elements printed on Kitakatat paper..
These will be cut out and chine-colléd once the mezzotint plates are completed...


 Here are some of the plates I've been working on...

 I proof my plates to make sure I have all the values I want...Next up is the fun part...Editioning!

 Here are the final prints...All of which are a combination of Mezzotint, Aquatint, Lithography and Chine-Collé.
 "Bundle Of Joy, Bundle Of Sticks"
 "On Earth As It Is In Heaven"
 "The Redundant Natur Of Evil"
 "Abaddon"
"Baptéme Du Feu"