Happy Easter, Jesus!

Today's post in celebration of Easter is a linoleum print or 'lino-cut' (same as the Taurus print for you regular readers). The above print is printed on a newsprint colored paper with varying shades of brown ink. Below is a print from the same block printed on black paper with gold ink.


Don't eat too many chocolate bunnies! Happy Easter, everybody.

Dionysus, Poseidon?... Hermes!

If I had known I was going to print so many of these scultpures from the Getty, I would have have better documented their subject/title(s). This is either Dionysus or Poseidon. (UPDATE: my resourceful sources tell me this is actually a sculpture of Hermes, messenger to the gods. Thanks,B!) Maybe I should just call it Man with Big Squared-Off Beard, since that is what drew me to snap a picture of this piece.

This print is a monotype printed in black etching ink with the blue background tapped onto the plate and just a tiny bit of detail added with watercolor.



Above is the plate ready to be printed. Below is the print being pulled from the plate.

Constantine the Great

The Museum series continues with Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. Fun Facts: Constantine was the first Christian Roman Emperor (a turning point for the Christian Church). Constantinople was named after him and was the first Christian city in the world.

This print also continues my experimentation with applying color by tapping ink onto the plate. This go round I discovered you can't work the plate too long or your colored ink will start to dry to the plate. I worked the plate for about three hours and had all the highlights and shadows in copper patina greens and rust in browns and oranges, and unfortunately much of that detail stayed on the plate and did not transfer to the print. I think the print is still successful, but its not as opaque or detailed as I'd anticipated. But that's all part of printmaking; you never know exactly what you're going to get.



This is the copper plate with the residual ink still on it. Better than the print? You decide.

Rome or Bust

This is the second print in the Getty Villa Museum series. This is a monotype of a Roman Bust printed in the same method as the previous post: monotype with black ink, with color tapped onto the plate.

At the Museum

This print was inspired by a recent trip to the Getty Villa museum. This was the original J. Paul Getty Museum. It was closed for renovation before the opening of the new Getty Center. The Villa now houses Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities. Really old stuff.

This is a monotype printed in black etching ink on Rives BFK paper. The color in the print was applied by dabbing or 'tapping' different colored inks onto the plate with fingertips. I've been printing the monotypes for a while now, usually just in black ink and coloring them afterwards. Applying the color to the plate before printing creates an entirely different look and definitely warrants further exploration/experimentation. Hail Caesar!

Taurus the bull

This one goes out to all my fellow Taureans out there. Its coming up fast on the zodiac calendar, so it seems appropriate. I am a taurus, very much so. My father always called me a bull in a china shop and I'm pretty damned stubborn. I don't know how much stock I put in the zodiac, but everything I read about taurus rings very true.

This is a linoleum print or linocut. A linocut is a relief print printed from an image carved into a piece or 'block' of linoleum. Linoleum removed from the surface creates the negative space; the remaining surface holds ink and creates the positive space.

The image size of this print is approx. 4 1/2" x 6" on a 6 1/2" x 9 1/2" piece of black Arches Cover paper. Available for sale here.

Nicolette

This is a collograph print of my printmaking pal Nicolette.
Available for sale here.


The print being pulled from the plate.



The rough sketch used to design the plate.