print trade fall 2012

I usually start with a photograph. I make a few drawings from the photos to familiarize myself with the subject and then I do many arrangements of scanned drawings in photoshop, either staying true to the drawing with the emphasis on modeling or outline.

I settled on two types of rendering in this print. A painterly aquatint for the banana plant that roughly followed a drawing and an outline for the figure with guitar that I traced from another drawing. I'm not really interested in photorealism here. In doing a few drawings, I'm more interested in the feeling and message carried by the way an image is made. I am able to distill the necessary details through drawing and I use photoshop to make quick arrangements.

This is a two-plate hard ground and aquatint etching. One plate for the figure and one for the banana plant. Banana is printed in bluegreen Akua ink with 5-1 trans base. Figure is printed using carbon black Akua ink with a 5 - 1 trans base as well. I used cold-rolled 20 gauge steel sanded down with a final 1500grit paper. You get a massive amount of plate tone even with 1500grit. This is something I don't want, considering there's a lot of negative space that I want clean, so I added 5 parts trans base to one part ink.

other tech:

etchant - 1 part copper sulfate to 1 part NaCl

hard ground - 1 part Graphic Chemical asphaltum to 1 part naptha

aquatint - hand dusted and crushed rosin through some leggings and melted on a hot plate.

Ain't Done Yet

So it's been a while since I last posted. Not because the output has died out or that I've quit all-together, though the thought has crossed my mind. Throwing in the towel is easy on the one hand and impossible on the other. I have a dialectic tendency and with that I amuse myself with lots of stylistic breaks. So, I've been busy and I'm happy for that. I've stayed in the game..... The above shot is of a sculpture for Avenue of the Arts in Kansas City. It will move to Webster University next. Thanks to Dana Turkovic, Oren Yagil and Steve Strang for making this happen. It'll be on loan to Webster for an undetermined time. Gotta thank my man Porter Arneill for inviting me to play in KC.

I purchased a Peter Marcus intaglio press and have started a print studio with a good friend and fellow print aficionado - Gina Alvarez! Ain't that cool!? We are slowly getting things ready. We've built some walls, scraped and painted the floor and now we need to fabricate a press bed. Good thing I just outfitted my mig with argon.

Gina has a piece in KC as well. Just thought I would share a small portion of that huge project.

YELLOWBEAR is our studio name and possible brand. It comes from my daughter's words that were translated into sculpture - "I am a big yellow bear queen". It sounds Native American. I jokingly say it reminds me of my favorite place to live. It has the element of color. It shows strength in reference to the bear. It's simple. I struggled with conceptually challenging names and names that referenced printmaking. I even threw in my favorite GBV album as a name. Almost went there too. Gina and I have some projects underway and I will get to posting them when the press bed gets done. Thanks for reading. Robert