Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Newish print and newish plans

Let's start with life news. In August, I'm moving to Wichita Kansas, to go to graduate school. I'm excited and terrified and a bunch of other feelings, but it is entirely good news. I'll be studying printmaking at Wichita State for the next three years. My favorite teacher I ever had went there for his graduate degree in the same thing, and it's everything I really wanted from a program. Plus, I got a sweet funding deal.

Now, the print part.


It's been a few weeks since I finished this thing, but I just now got a digital image of it. I've cut my hair since this print was done, back into the Rosemary's Baby do, so that's sort of weird to me. Because I do so many self portraits, changing a hairstyle freaks me out a little bit. But the last time I got the undercut done they shaved up into my cowlicks, so it had to go, even if I decide to grow it back. We'll see. (Not that that matters at all to anyone but me.)

This print started sort of like "Hold Me" from my previous blog post, where I just drew right into the hard ground with very little planning, then etched it. I spent a good while after that touching it up and getting it where I wanted it. The amount of proofs pulled was unreasonable. By the time I thought I was ready to print it had a very light touch to some of the areas, things that were pretty much gone after printing about 10 times. Of course, I started editioning thinking all was well when someone pointed out that my apostrophe was in the wrong place, so I had to scrape and burnish that out, and by the time that was done most of those subtle contrasts were gone. So I redid them. So much for a quick print.

All in all, I'm happy with it now. I actually did edition it immediately, which is something I have a habit of putting off, so it is as done as it will ever be. I painted one of my proofs, but immediately afterward my nephew decided he wanted to paint in the same area, so it's no longer what it was. He didn't paint on it directly, just near it enough to splash a bit. Maybe I should just have him paint on it at this point, though. It would probably be better than I could do anyway. I sound self deprecating, but that kid is a fabulous artist.

That's all for now! I'll be in Utah this summer before the graduate program takes off, so drop me a line if you're in the area, everyone. I miss people that aren't children/family desperately, so let's see if I can get sick of them before I go off to a new place where everyone is a stranger.