Dry Point on Plexi (Artist's Proof): Book Escape

Book Escape 8x10 Dry Point (Artist's Proof) on Revere paper with Watercolor

 I've been looking at my book of etchings and dry points by Anders Zorn(1860-1920), and they always fire me up with skill-craving and work-harder-inspiration. I want to get better at drawing in general, and printmaking that uses drawing. I've also been looking at an artist who's work inspires me with his quiet, ephemeral figures - Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1851-1938). While making the plate for this piece (process shots start at the bottom),  and painting the artist's proof to remind myself where darks and lights should mingle, I've been referring to books on both artists.  I still have a lot to do before the dry point plate is finished, but I'm really enjoying the lessons I see in each artist's extraordinary work.

P.S. This weekend, I'll be in booth #5 at the Sierra Madre Art Fair Saturday and Sunday, and Saturday night, I'll be at the Art Matters Encore exhibit at the Huntington Library, so come on over and say hello. :)

Palette and the print, with watercolors

The plexiglass plate and the artist's proof on the press bed

After a trip through the press, pulling the print (Revere paper)

Using Akua Intaglio ink (in Graphite) on the plate to pull a test print.

An 8x10 sheet of plexiglass and the beginnings
of my reading figure incised in the surface

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Artist Quote
Train the people to be lovers of what is best in their own particular work, and Art will again become as near and dear to the people as it was when the great men of the Renaissance came trooping from the workshops of Italy to fill our galleries with the immortal results of their splendid labor.
~John White Alexander (1856-1915) from a speech - cir 1901-1912

Monotype: Arizona & Angel Face

Arizona & Angel Face 6.5x4.5 Monotype Ghost with Watercolor
Sold

 I'm back from the San Diego Artwalk with a lighter road case, and a festive satchel of memories from visits with old and new friends. Thanks so much to everyone who came out to the show to visit, talk about & collect art, and catch up. Next weekend, I'll be exhibiting in Sierra Madre, CA at the 50th Annual Art Fair in Memorial Park, and Saturday night, I'll be in San Marino at the Art Matters Encore exhibit for the San Marino League at Huntington Gardens.  If you're local to the area, please attend either of these events. They each support great causes; the Sierra Madre Library, and philanthropic Arts Programs through Art Center and the Japanese Gardens at Huntington library.

Some of my roadies and festival friends hanging out at
San Diego Artwalk on Saturday April 28, 2012

A monotype ghost print; the plate had enough ink left
after the first run through the press to pull a second, fainter
image, which is called a ghost. The plate is then cleaned, re-inked,
and ready to make something else.

The same zinc plate, with an even coat of black printmaking ink rolled onto the surface.
The image above is pulled out of the ink with fingers, q-tips, paper towels, etc.
the plate is run through a press, to transfer the wet-ink image to paper.

A zinc plate, clamped to a table while I bevel the edges to a 45 degree angle

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Art Quote

Oftentimes young artists are given the impression that the artist must start with a vision, the grand theme, and then you find the tools to express your big idea. I've come to another conclusion through my personal journey. The artist excavates the vision out of one's body of work, out of the long process of becoming the artist and creating the work. Like a refiner's fire, the artistic process clarifies the vision, and shapes the artist.

So, take a group of your paintings or drawings, and consider them all together to see the underlying themes in your own work. Make notes of your strongest impressions, or even write a couple sentences about each picture, asking yourself "Why did I make this painting?" and "What am I trying to express?" Even if your notes are more word association than sentences, you will see themes emerge. You could also gather a few trusted artist friends, and do this together.

Next, you can ask yourself, "Is this what I wanted to do?" And, moving forward with your artwork, you will have more ability to consider how you shape the underlying themes you express in your work.

Artist, Patricia Watwood 2012

Watercolor: Clementines for us, Darling?

Celementines for us, Darling? 8x6 Watercolor on paper (sold)

This watercolor was done for a show a few years ago, and I've been meaning to set up a similar arrangement with a brightly patterned cloth under the bowl, large scale. In the original set up, the hand-thrown bowl was an engagement gift from a dear friend of ours. Under the clementines, there's a whorled, red heart glazed into the ceramic, and the leaves of the clementines hint at a yin-yang balance. I think I should paint something similar, but bigger. What say you?

This weekend, I'll be at the San Diego Artwalk in Little Italy. This is one of my favorite art festivals because of the environment (ocean, sunshine, Italian stuff), a chance to hang out with good friends that drive out from Arizona to meet us there, and those groovy San Diegans really like art, which makes it fun to talk about the process of printmaking (more evangelizing of the medium). If you're in the area, I'm on Cedar Street, in booth 358, so come and say hello.

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Art Quote
You don't need more time....
You just need to decide.
~Seth Godin

Watercolor: Birds on my Counter

Birds on my Counter 5x4 Watercolor on paper

 This is a little study for a larger painting I haven't done yet. The mini cast iron birdbath is on my kitchen bar upstairs with a white camellia in the bowl, and I've used it in so many still lives, I've lost count. When I see vintage photos of artists' studios from long ago, I look for the objects on the shelves that I might recognize in their paintings, and it makes me wonder if the items were gifts, or found, or handed down through the family. Every artist's clutter has a story to tell.

Birds on my Counter in process

Earlier in the month, I posted a link to a printmaking competition I'm a finalist in. If you missed that post, I'll repeat the details here in case you're interested in voting. I'd be super grateful. :) The polls close on Monday, April 30th. Each print in the running is a tiny 4"x4", made with black inks from Akua. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners will be selected by an online voting poll open to the public.

20 4x4 Finalists in the Fade to Black Akua inks competition.

You can vote here by 1.) clicking the link that says Click Here to Vote!, and 2.) press the YES button under my entry, and 3.) press the FINISH button at the bottom of that page. (The winner attends a one-week Akua printmaking workshop in Santa Fe, Mew Mexico, and runners-up get an assortment of ink and paper supplies [either prize is pretty-stinkin'-wonderous!].)  Thank YOU!

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Art Quote

Cecilia Beaux was born in Philadelphia, PA 1863 and is of French descent. Mrs. Thomas A. Janvier gave her her first lessons in drawing; she was also a pupil of William Sartain, and won general recognition as an able portrait painter, The first of her works to bring her fame was "Last days of infancy", which was exhibited at the Philadelphia Academy in 1885, and won the prize for the best painting by a resident woman artist; won the same prize in 1887, 1891, and 1892. Miss Beaux spent the winter of 1889-90 in Paris, studying in the life classes of the Academic Julien under Bouguereau, Robert-Fleury and Benjamin- Constant; also at Colarossi's where her drawings were criticised by Courtois and Dagnan-Bouveret. 

Spending the summer at Concarneau, she was aided by suggestions from Alexander Harrison and Charles Lasar. After a visit to Italy and England she returned to Philadelphia. In 1893 she won the gold medal of the Philadelphia Art Club for the portrait of Dr Grier; also the Dodge prize of the National Academy of Design for her portrait of Mrs Stetson. Miss Beaux was the seventh woman to whom the honor of an election to membership in the Society of American Artists was awarded. In 1894 she was elected associate of the National Academy of Design, being the third woman to gain admission; elected full member in 1902. She is recognized here and abroad as the most distinguished of living women painters.

 To the salon of the Champs de Mars, Paris, 1896, she sent six paintings. These were hung in a group an unusual distinction, and brought to her an election as an associate of the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts.  Her figures are usually represented in repose or at least in arrested action, but "Dorothea and Francesca" shows her power of rendering motions with equal success. Her portrait of Mrs Roosevelt is one of her happiest creations. "The Dreamer", "New England Woman", "Sita and Sarita", "The Cynthia", "Ernesta and her little Brother" are all portraits. Miss Beaux's portraits are never composite; they are not in any sense types. Her individuality is developed in two characteristics; brilliancy and refinement.  Giles Edgerton says: "It is not once in a generation that a woman so subverts her essentially characteristic outlook on life to her work that her art impulse becomes universal as that of the greatest men often is. One feels that Cecilia Beaux has done this in her portrait work as George Eliot did in her stories."

~Biographical Sketches of American Artists, compiled by Miss Helen Earle, Michigan State Library 1912

Dry Point on Plexiglass with Watercolor: Just Feel the Sun

Just Feel the Sun 4x6 Drypoint with Watercolor on Arches cover paper

 Here's a frivolous little twirl from the studio; the image started with a sketchbook doodle (see the bottom of this post) after a rough week a few years ago, talking myself out of the pity party I was having, and remembering all the amazing and wonderful things in my life. Sometimes, I think it's really as simple as this; stop thinking, breathe deep, and just feel the sun.

Since the last post focused on this same method of printmaking, I thought I'd throw this one out there too, so you can see how versatile it is. Dry point is suited for almost any style of drawing. Give it a whirl.  I can't wait to do some gestural drawings & watercolor dry point ideas I have floating in my sketchbooks.

After a trip through the press, the print was pulled (an edition of 25).

After using a twisted scribe to incise the lines of the drawing
(and adding a little dog in the background), I inked and wiped the plate.

I beveled a 4x6 piece of plexiglass and did a drawing with a sharpie marker.

The doodle in my sketch book

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Art Quote

If anybody looks at a picture by Claude Monet from the point of view of a Raphael, he will see nothing but a meaningless jargon of wild paint-strokes. And if anybody looks at a Raphael from the point of view of a Claude Monet, he will, no doubt, only see hard, tinny figures in a setting devoid of any of the lovely atmosphere that always envelops form seen in nature. So wide apart are some of the points of view in painting. In the treatment of form these differences in point of view make for enormous variety in the work. So that no apology need be made for the large amount of space occupied in the following pages by what is usually dismissed as mere theory; but what is in reality the first essential of any good practice in drawing. To have a clear idea of what it is you wish to do, is the first necessity of any successful performance. But our exhibitions are full of works that show how seldom this is the case in art. Works showing much ingenuity and ability, but no artistic brains; pictures that are little more than school studies, exercises in the representation of carefully or carelessly arranged objects, but cold to any artistic intention.

The position of art to-day is like that of a river where many tributaries meeting at one point, suddenly turn the steady flow to turbulence, the many streams jostling each other and the different currents pulling hither and thither. After a time, these newly-met forces will adjust themselves to the altered condition, and a larger, finer stream will be the result. Something analogous to this would seem to be happening in art at the present time, when all nations and all schools are acting and reacting upon each other, and art is losing its national characteristics. The hope of the future is that a larger and deeper art, answering to the altered conditions of humanity, will result.

~The Practice & Science of Drawing, by Harold Speed 1920

Dry Point on Plexi with Watercolor: Asleep in Rome

Asleep in Rome 5x5 Dry Point with Watercolor on Tan Rives BFK paper

The plexiglass plate & dry point for this image was made after a trip to Rome with our kids in the summer of 2007. We stayed in a simple but wonderfully ancient apartment in the old section of Rome.  It remains a high point in my memory of special family-time together, exploring and discovering - everything from Roman Ruins to Gelato, every day.

This dry point - number ten in an edition of 20 - was inked in a dusty turquoise blue (see process photos starting at the bottom of this post), so I painted it over the weekend with blues, greens and violets. I'll assemble a frame this week, and take the little sleeper to the San Diego Artwalk.

The inked plexiglass plate on the right, and the print on the left, just after a trip through the press.

Pulling one of the prints in the edition after a trip through the press.

After the plate is covered with ink, everything is wiped off the surface,
leaving ink in the recessed lines of the drawing.

The plexiglass plate if ready for printing: ink is applied to the surface evenly.

In the sun, you can see the texture of the cross hatching
in the plexiglass surface, and the tool it was done with -
a twisted scribe (sometimes called a Whistler's needle).

After beveling a sheet of plexiglass, I've put a drawing
in the surface with a sharpie, and I'm scraping lines into the plastic that will hold ink.

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Art Quote

The publication of this book was stopped for four years owing to the war. This however is but a small matter in comparison to what art in a big way has suffered. Many artists have given their lives; more have been ruined; and a few have found opportunities - subjects - in the horrors and miseries of the war. Galleries in Europe ceased to acquire the few contemporary works that were made, unless these were commanded by the state. Some of the galleries are reported even to be destroyed. Exhibitions, save for the raising of war funds, mostly ceased, especially in Europe. And even as peace dawns, art still flies away. The belief in some quarters that a new art, or a new inspiration, would come from the war has not been realized. No one who knew anything ever thought it would, save in the case of those who recorded the war. 

But art will never die, it is everlasting, eternal; and though artists have suffered more than the members of any other profession, they will come into their own again. 

Precious records have vanished. For a while in Europe, even those etchers who had the opportunity to work, unless in the government service, could obtain neither copper nor tools nor acids to carry on with. Paper mills in Italy have been burned and bombed. Old paper has disappeared. Technical schools have closed. Dealers were unable to obtain prints. Collectors had no time to collect. That such a state of things should come to pass was incredible. Yet it happened in our day and generation. 

Tradition in art too was in danger of being forgotten. It is with a view, then, of recording what I have seen and studied and experienced and practised, with a view of trying to carry on tradition and recording facts, I am glad to have had the volume written and ready to issue in the first year of the war - published now that I hope it is ended, now that I hope there may be no more war. 

And if the world really cared for art and literature and the arts of peace, there would be no more war or rumours of war. We have relapsed into vandalism and vulgarity. The world is now made up mostly of prigs and prohibitionists; they will venture on the suppression of art as they have ventured on the suppression of wine and song and brought about the unsexing of women. But art will arise again, and laziness, hypocrisy, and sentiment, which crush and cumber the earth, again will be swept away. I shall not see the new earth, but it will come forth.

~Etchers and Etching, by Joseph Pennell 1919

Silk Aquatint: Bandana

Bandana 5x7 Aquatint on BFK Rives paper

 Over the weekend, I continued experiments with silk aquatint = this time using plexiglass as a plate, and making two different consistencies of paint so I could control more tone in the printmaking process. (See photos starting at the bottom) In previous posts about silk aquatint (here and here), I used the gloss medium & varnish/acrylic paint mixture straight up, which is a little thick and viscous.

For this new one, I made a small batch of the same, but I cut some of it 50-50 with water, so I could paint thick and thin, and layer 2-3 washes onto the screen, letting them dry in between, and then run test prints to see how much ink remained in the weave after wiping the plate. I got a better feel for it with this little portrait, so I'm prepping a bigger plate - 18x24, and using a new fabric; silkscreen.

It might be awhile before I post the 18x24, since I'm busy prepping for the San Diego Artwalk in 2 weeks. If you're in that area on April 28 & 29, stop by booth #358 on Cedar Street. :)

Test prints of Bandana, drying in my studio.

Pulling a test print after running the plate through the press.

Using tarlatan to wipe the plate before printing.

Scrap matboard as a squeegee to pull ink across the plate,
and into the fine weave of the synthetic silk on the plexi

 I learned during previous experiments with this printmaking method that the best prints (for me) come from a mixture of Akua Intaglio ink, cut 50-50 with Akua Transparent Base. If you try this, go ahead and use the ink full force, as it may work for you, but Akua is very pigment-rich, and I find that in this particular printmaking method, the halftones vary much more broadly with the transparent base mixed into the ink.

The beginnings of this print: a plexi plate with synthetic silk adhered to the surface with black acrylic paint. I did a drawing on the silk, and then began painting layers of white in all the areas I wanted the block ink to wipe away from while inking the plate to print. The white paint fills the weave of the silk, making it too slick to hold ink. Areas where the weave of the silk are still textured sold ink, and will print dark. Painting the plate is a process of "painting the light".  :)

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Art Quote
The trouble is that in all art books, not only art histories - all art teaching - there is no discrimination. It is not what the student learns from books or teachers, but what he has to unlearn for himself that is so difficult. But if he starts by looking at good art intelligently, and working scientifically, he has - if he has anything in him - only to go ahead. We are apt to assume that there was little or no bad work done in the old times. For my own part, I believe on the contrary; there were mountains of it, but that it has mostly, mercifully for us, passed out of existence.  One big modern artist has confessed that it was just because he did not have to unlearn things that he had time and the ability to learn, and then to practise them. Another big modern teacher has said that he could teach any student to paint, draw, etch, but God alone could make him an artist. And it is with the idea of keeping such rules and laws before the student that this book has been written, and by writing it I hope I have done the weakest brother no harm, even though I should persuade him not to try to become an etcher.

~Etchers & Etching, by Joseph Pennell 1916

Linocut: Thistle

Thistle 4.25x6 Linocut printed on Arches Cover paper,
with Akua Mars Black ink and painted with Watercolor 

After working larger these past few weeks, I wanted the satisfaction of starting and finishing something in one day, so I carved this little linocut (process shots begin at the bottom of this post). I find carving very meditative, and quieting. When I'm stressed or grieving, the process of art-making is a safe refuge, and usually, there's a sense of progress at the end of the day. The countdown to the San Diego Artwalk is ticking at 14 days, with a long list of things to finish before April 28th & 29th. Hiding in the process of carving this little face was like taking a power nap. :)

After carving & printing a test proof, I added a thistle pattern to the
background, inspired by  the lovely textiles of William Morris.

Getting ready to carve with my secret weapons: An S-Brace,
Flexcut & Speedball knives, a big glass of water
and a bowl of popcorn. And an audio book. :)

A piece of burlap-backed linoleum adhered to MDF board
with wood glue. I used brown shoe polish on the linoleum,
followed by a thin coat of polyurethane to seal the surface
& see more contrast while carving.
I've begun a light pencil sketch in this shot,
and will go over that with a sharpie magic marker.

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Art Quote

Rosa Bonheur had a fine character, at one and same time proud, independent, and full of self-sacrifice and heart. To such a nature, the unhappy Franco-Prussian war was a terrible blow, and all the more so because she was brave, and loved France. On this noble patriotic artist, it had a really heart-rending effect.
During the Prussian occupation, the ten-antlered deer with whom I had a battle described elsewhere in these memoirs, also showed himself to be a real patriot. One day some German officers in full dress uniform came from Fontainebleau to visit Rosa Bonheur's studio. But on their arrival, they found the doors closed against them. They insisted, however, in going round in the park, which the gardener did not dare to hinder. On reaching the stag's paddock, the officers were desirous to get a nearer look at the animal; and, despite the gardener's warning, they opened the gate and went in. As soon as he percieved them, the stag rushed towards them, and leaping into the middle of the pool that was his drinking place, he splashed the muddy water all over their fine uniforms. This protest of the ten-antlered stag was a great joy to his mistress.

~Paul Chardin, from the book Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur, by Theodore Stanton 1910

Watercolor: Reading Room

Reading Room 30x22 Watercolor and Graphite on Strathmore 500 Plate Bristol paper
Sold

I started this painting exactly a year ago, and then stored it in my studio closet with just a few washes on top of the graphite lay-in. My set up for working large was awkward, so I re-arranged my studio,  assembled a new easel, and pulled the painting out of the closet to take another look. You can see the process shots beginning at the bottom of this post.

 If you follow this blog, you might remember my experiments with silk aquatint a few weeks ago. The print (above) - An Affinity for Palm Trees - is one of the 20 finalists in Akua inks Fade to Black competition. Each print in the running is a tiny 4"x4", made with any black or graphite inks from Akua. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners will be selected by an online voting poll open to the public.

I would be so very grateful for your vote, if you feel inclined.  :)  You can vote here by 1.) clicking the link that says Click Here to Vote!, and then 2.) press the YES button under my entry, and then 3.) press the Finish button at the bottom of that page. (The winner attends a one-week Akua printmaking workshop in Santa Fe, Mew Mexico [wouldn't-that-be-so-stinkin'-awesome?!] and runners-up get an assortment of ink and paper supplies [also-pretty-stinkin'-wonderous!].)

20 4x4 Finalists in the Fade to Black Akua inks competition.

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Working larger = bigger brushes; 1.5" W&N Flat brush is fun.

Mid-way through painting the chair, I added a snoozing dog.

Painting larger takes longer, but it's a good challenge;
step up, step away, squint, step up, step away, squint.

Glazing to layer color - and then adding texture with dry-brush.

Laying the under-drawing in with powdered graphite

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Art Quote
I've never done a perfect drawing. The cheapest camera installed at the gas station parking lot will collect a more accurate depiction that I can make. I think of Art like I think about baseball. Whether you win or lose - isn't it great to be playing baseball?! Even the best players only get on base one third of the time. The reason we're doing this is that as kids, we started drawing and felt happy. So now, we should still be happy doing it. The focus should be on the love of art-making. Joy is in the full deployment of our faculties.
Anthony Ryder ~ 2010 during a Drawing demo

Monotype & Pastel: Winter Geraniums

Winter Geraniums 18x24 Monotype with Pastel on Rives BFK paper

Back in the 70's, as soon as the leaves began to turn, my grandparents drove from New England to Florida to escape the pending cold that might strain my grandfather's partially removed lung. My grandmother shuffled all her pots of geraniums into their sunporch, and during the snowy winter, my parents checked on the house and watered the flowers till my grand parents returned in the Spring. I loved walking into this room full of sun and my grandmother's painted wicker chairs - to smell the pungent scent of geraniums in bloom while the ground was still crunchy with snow and frost in March and April.

Pulling the print on the press bed. It was dry by the next day, and the pastels (nupastel, berol, stabillo and rembrandt) released beautifully to the paper, whether it was inked in layers or thin washes.

 Using Akua Kolor inks on an 18x24 sanded and beveled plexiglass sheet - painting the image after sketching it in Water Soluble Crayons (burnt sienna). My reference photo - snapped around 1978 - is there on the lower right.

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Art Quote
The dawn of printing was at hand. Manuscripts, whether handsomely embellished, or copied simply without ornament, were expensive luxuries which only the rich could purchase. With the revival of learning, for students in general, for the poorer classes, for school children, cheap books costing as little as possible but serving the same end as the manuscript were necessary, and the xylograph came at its hour. (It should be mentioned that block books are now considered by some authorities to have come later than the invention of printing with movable type - ie about 1460 )
 From the earliest times, copyists had used stamps, and copper stencillings in order to apply initials that recurred frequently - a practice which contains in it the first germ of printing. Playing cards were printed by the same process, and afterwards illuminated. Picture books came next, with text and illustrations cut on the same block - the leaves being printed on one side only, and afterwards, gummed back to back. Such was the book known as the Biblia Pauperum, 'Figurae typicae veteris atque antitypicae novi testament' - a short pictorial history in forty leaves of the Old and New Testament. Another of these block books is devoted to the history of St John the Evangelist and his apocalyptic dreams, of which there are six different editions with texts in Flemish, Saxon and German. The Ars Moriendi, or temptations of the dying, with terrifying pictures,  shows a moribund man assailed by devils, but as in all similar productions, the terrible is relieved by a touch of the grotesque. The Speculum humane salvation's is remarkable for being printed partly from blocks, and partly with movable characters. This shows the transition from xylography to printing proper. The printer of this work, in order to economise the composition of twenty seven leaves, used the blocks he possessed, and printed them together with twenty seven others, composed with movable type.
~Early Woodcut Initials, by Oscar Jennings 1908

Watercolor: Roses & Dahlias on the Kitchen Sill

Roses & Dahlia 21 x 10 Watercolor on paper

Sold

This is another painting from the archives (while I finish a larger monotype and some linocuts). I took many photos of my previous kitchen window with objects lined up in front of the glass in the sun, throwing shadows across the white tiles.  I still have a pile of snapshots to explore in paint and printmaking from those image files, but at the moment, I'm more focused on figures and interiors for Spring shows.  Still, it's nice to have this familiar subject to return to in nostalgic moments of reflection about that particular chapter of my life. That's one of the sweet tokens about using your own photos for art making;  each one is a journal of that time in your life, so there's a double sweetness in creating the painting - in the art-making process itself, and in pondering the memories the reference photo ignites for us.

Thanks to everyone who left comments, sent emails and tweeted responses in my last post about whether I should tackle the image I used in the watercolor Blanket Warmer as a silk aquatint in a larger format.  The encouragement was amazingly positive and so enthused, I'm really grateful for all your shout-outs to Go For It! You nice peeps make blogging better than ice cream. :)

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Art Quote

The true significance of Painting is one of the most pleasing discoveries which an American of sensibility and good powers of observation makes when sojourning in one of the old cities of Europe. He may have enjoyed pictures casually at home, and perhaps acquainted himself with the traits and the triumphs of eminent artists and schools, but it is only when he grows familiar with the best collections, in the permanent galleries abroad, that he distinctly feels what scope and interest belongs to pictorial art as a specific development of humanity - an illustration of history - a record of faith; at Rome and Madrid Paris and Florence, it is upon canvas that he reads the most vivid ideas, sentiments, and skill of bygone generations. Art comes home to his perceptions as a language wherein is expressed; the love of beauty, the struggle with fate, the power, puerility, hope, fear, trust and triumph of his race. Reason as he may subsequently of the comparative merits of the "old masters," modified as may become his taste by the study of recent painters, - this impression remains, that the executive perfection, the characteristic style, and the beautiful earnestness of pictorial art, three hundred years ago, was and is one of the most remarkable aesthetic phenomena, as well as one of the most interesting historical facts in human history. A "Painter" in the fifteenth century meant something more than a clever draughtsman, an apt imitator, or a pleasant diletante: the vocation was intimately allied with Religion, with Government, and with Society in the highest phase and form. It was pursued with a zeal, honored with a consideration, and illustrated by a class of men, which apart from its trophies, indicates that no profession achieved nobler estimation or influence. The lives and works of its votaries suggest a not less remarkable individuality and elevation; the biography of no Prince or Pope, Warrior or Poet conveys the idea of more select intelligence or concentrated and consecrated feeling, thought, life, and renown, than that of the greatest of the "old masters." That title presupposes not only a remarkable facility and power in the technicalities of art, but certain rich and rare endowments - poetical sympathies, philosophical insight, rectitude, aspiration, a hearty courtesy, faith in God and immortality, self devotion, self reliance, self respect - graces and grandeur of soul. Not that the painter then, any more than now, was free from human error, nor that his record is devoid of low and cruel traits - jealousy, sensuality, and egotistic hardihood; but at the period when painting achieved its highest results, the ideal of the painter's character was venerable, tender, exalted; and the very names of Michel Angelo, Raphael, and Correggio are fragrant with the best gifts and graces of humanity; of which the grand and beautiful elements of their pictures were the legitimate offspring and evidence. To draw accurately and give expression - individual and absolute, through lines, contours, and light and shade, and to enhance such effects by that wonderful faculty called "a feeling for color" - were but the artistic equipment; the soul, the mind, the life irradiated and hallowed the fruits thereof, and make it today marvelous, dear, and sacred. 

Book of the Artists; American Artist Life, by Henry Theodore Tuckerman 1867

Watercolor on Yupo: Blanket Warmer

Blanket Warmer 6.5 x 10 Watercolor on Yupo paper

This one is from the archives (Sold, but there's a matted reproduction of it here.), but I'm re-posting it because I like the composition and geometry of the image, and I'm thinking about trying to make a larger silk aquatint of the same scene. What do you all think? It would likely be black and white, unless I try printing it a la poupee, which might be sorta fun too. Leave me some feedback in the comments if you have a sec, and let me know if you think I should bite the bullet and tackle it. :)

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Art Quote

I may, as an illustration of my meaning recommend the beginner to select, as studies for colour, the works of Titian, Rubens, Vandyke, and occasionally of Murillo; but let him avoid, as studies in colour, the olive tinted pictures of the Italian school, and the sombre darkness of Spagnoletto, at least until he has made considerable progress and has well stored his mind with a just and correct power of appreciating the excellencies of the different great masters. And, whenever he may determine to copy any picture, let him decide also what his object may be in the undertaking; whether, that is to say, it be for its drawing, its colouring, its expression, or its general subject; then let him follow it up with reference to this peculiar design. 

The mind, so trained in the best school of art, will avoid all undue gaudiness and glitter, and all meretricious ornamentation, as it will, on the other hand, dread to sink into the dark and gloom of extreme soberness in colour. There will ever be a constant anxiety to guard against violent oppositions of light and shadow, as well as strong contrasts of colour; and it will be ever carefully remembered, that the greatest beauty of art is "harmony", -- that quiet, unobtrusive harmony, which is called "tone". 

The Art of Miniature Painting, by Charles William Day 1852

Linocut: Reveille

Reveille 6x6 Linocut with Watercolor

Available on Etsy.

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This linocut was made for a print exchange, with the theme of The Nude. I used a composite of several photos in my files to create the sketch; snapshots of an old carriage house apartment I rented years ago, one of my cats on a sill, and a few figures from posing sessions with models and friends. The version above was painted with watercolor, and it's available in my Etsy shop.

The print without watercolor

Pulling the Print

Carving the Linocut

Preliminary drawing on unmounted linoleum with sharpie and watercolor

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Art Quote

Of late Whistler had but little cause to complain of lack of appreciation on this side, for while an art so subtle as his is bound to be more or less misunderstood, critics amateurs and a goodly portion of the public have for a long time acknowledged his greatness as an etcher, a lithographer, and a painter. In fact, for at least ten years past, his works have been gradually coming to this country where they belong. England and Scotland have been searched for prints and paintings until the great collections - much greater than the public know - of his works are here. Some day the American people will be made more fully acquainted with the beautiful things he has done many of which have never been seen save by a few intimate friends 

The struggle for recognition was long and bitter - so long and so bitter that it developed in him the habits of controversy and whimsical irritability by which he was for a generation more widely known than through his art.

When it was once reported that he was going to America, he said "It has been suggested many times; but, you see, I find art so absolutely irritating to the people that, really, I hesitate before exasperating another nation.' To another who asked him when he was coming, he answered, with emphasis, "When the duty on art is removed."

Arthur Jerome Eddy - Recollections and Impressions of James McNeill Whistler 1903