Avoiding linocut regret … true confessions

The past week has been all about clouds and heat. My visit to the Des Moines Arts Festival was positive, but as always it was punctuated by lots of heat and threatening clouds. Luckily clouds are inspiring to me. Here are some that lit our way as we drove east back to Indiana…

skies over iowa
Traveling at over 70 mph meant that my Iphone could only capture this scene in a diffused impressionistic manner. I think it works for the image.

Back at home, I have been working hard on the plans for my large linocut inspired by another cloud scene. I worked to complete the drawing I had started before I left for Iowa — inspired in part by the lines and curves of a Georgia O’Keefe painting. One of the benefits to doing a full-sized study is you can see what your linocut might look like, and watch for mistakes.

I’m sometimes willing to start just from a pencil outline, and allow the design to develop as the printing progresses. I’m not willing to do this in the case of this large linocut. Perhaps it is the size of this linocut, along with the corresponding risks including the cost of the block (about $60), the paper (about $120), and my time that are giving me pause. I hung my completed tracing paper study on my hallway wall one evening, and the next morning had the terrible feeling that it was not right. Back to the drawing table…

graphite stick
My creation tool for large studies is a 9B graphite stick. The flat back end is useful for laying in tones without creating lines.

After another entire day of work, I came up with another version which I think works better. I spent lots of time looking at the values needed to make this a good composition, as well as what patterns I wanted to highlight in the work. When the two are hung together, I felt the bottom study was much more successful.

do over skies
A tale of two studies. I think the lower one works better for my purposes.

I’m still deciding about the horizon line. In the actual photograph, the horizon is made up of deciduous trees. But perhaps a more Iowa-like horizon would provide a better complement to the curvaceous clouds.  Now it is time to decide on the colors scheme for the clouds…

Even though I lost a few days of work with my do-over, I’m happy to realize my large mistakes on tracing paper — rather than after a month of carving and printing.

Where do you try to catch your mistakes? Any stories of linocut regret?

Working from photographs … sort of

Clouds — my current fascination — are natural phenomena that are very difficult to sketch with any detail. They move, and your perspective changes each time you look up at the cloud and then down to your paper. My latest linocut planning makes use of a photograph I took with my Iphone and this artist’s secret tool — tracing paper.

small photo & sketches
A large photograph, tracing paper and ruler begin the transformation process.

Continue reading “Working from photographs … sort of”

Sometimes horizons are necessary

Perspective in art is difficult. My early lessons came from sketching the interior of the Indiana University Art Museum, designed by famed architect, I.M. Pei. There are few right angles to be found except between the walls and the floor. So when I began my exploration of nature patterns and topographies, I was delighted to find that I could do this without using traditional perspectives.

Tranquil Terraces Dawning
©Elizabeth Busey. Tranquil Terraces Dawning. Reduction linocut. 10 x 33in image size, edition of 19, $375 unframed.

With some of my topographies, like Tranquil Terraces Dawning, I immersed the viewer in the patterns, which give a sort of roller coaster feeling of being about to plunge down into the rice paddies. But with clouds, this makes less sense…

The reality is that sometimes, what you are exploring is interesting only in relation to something else. With clouds, your eye really needs some cues if you are to understand the scale and the vastness of each formation. You need a horizon. I slipped a horizon into my second linocut, Highway Caprice. Now with my latest linocut, I’m back to horizons again.

pink horizon
You can see where I need to start experimenting with monotypes.

I have printed two layers of ink here, and you can see where the horizon line might be, but all will be revealed only after I do some carving and lay down some darker inks. The image for this linocut was captured east of where I live, after a tremendous storm over early spring fields. More will be revealed soon…

Sneaking up on color

Were you one of those people who saw the Internet-featured dress as blue and black? Or were you in the white and gold camp? This was an example of color perception being relative — that color isn’t fixed, but changes depending on many factors. This makes finding the right next color layer a challenge for me. I have spent the last week or so sneaking up on the colors that I imagine for my next cloud-themed linocut. Here’s a portion of the linocut in progress:

Rosy colored cloud
Sunset illuminating clouds — in progress.

I’m exploring the effect that the setting sun would have on a blanket of clouds. I wanted the brightest parts to be either completely white or a warm yellow. The task then was to choose colors that will provide the dimensionality of the clouds, and then the dark (by contrast) blue and purple sky.

color chart
Watercolor chart created during election night for Bush v. Gore. I wonder if I will have some more nights like this during the current U.S. political season.

Intuitively, I want the lowest parts to have purple shadows, and the upper part to have a dark-greyed teal. But how to get there is the question. Purple over the yellow yields a rich brown, a color only associated with tornado clouds. I use this color chart to give me ideas of which way to head. I created this chart on the ill-fated election evening of the Bush vs. Gore election. Hour after hour we watched to see if a winner would be declared, and instead watched the newscasters flounder about in confusion. Mixing these watercolors kept me grounded.

My color challenges are two-fold. My sense is that the colors in the clouds should be transparent, so what color is beneath will directly affect the next color layer. In addition, what a color is next to greatly affects our perceptions. My favorite college art class (besides printmaking) was a color and composition class. Using a box of colored papers we were asked to create demonstrations that would fool the eye. Here are my two best examples:

pantone different looks same
Stripes of two different colors look the same when placed on different colored grounds.

In this example, the challenge was to take two different colors, and using different backgrounds convince the eye that it was seeing the same color. The colors I used are at the top, and then shown on top of two other colors. The illusion is helped by keeping the stripes away from each other.

pantone same looks different
Rectangles of the same blue green paper look markedly different on purple and yellow grounds.

In this example, the blue green paper is the same on each side, but your eye is challenged by the different color fields of purple and yellow.

I have probably two or three color layers left on my present linocut. Not much carving, but adding layers will more fully define the clouds and hopefully provide some more depth. To get to the darkest colors I may have to employ some more opaque ink, now that the cloud body is finished. I just hope I can accomplish on paper what I have had in my mind all along…

Celebrating memorable imagery

This image has been on my Iphone home screen ever since my first model. I captured these clouds with an Iphone 3 from the passenger seat of our 2000 Sienna minivan, as we hurtled west on I-94 through North Dakota. For all of the jokes made about North Dakota being uninteresting, I find the state a beautiful place to travel through by car. In the summer, the skies really are this intense blue, with horizons that stretch for miles and fields of bright yellow rapeseed punctuating the land.

Highway Caprice
Elizabeth Busey. Highway Caprice. Reduction linocut on Rives BFK, 22 x 16in image size, $450 unframed.

I try not to simply duplicate my photography when I create a linocut, but the cloud patterns I love move so quickly that a photographic record is a necessity. I get to take liberties with all the other aspects of the creation. Here I created a purple underskirt for the clouds, and a haze above the rolling hills. In my photograph, we had a highway rapidly disappearing in the distance, which I replaced with fields of slowly emerging rapeseed.

Rapeseed is the seed used in Canola oil (a combination of Canada and oil), and its flowers are a shocking greenish yellow. Your mind and eyes have a difficult time resolving what you are actually seeing when you come over a ridge and see this colorful splendor.

I did put the suggestion of a trail in my imaginary fields in honor of the many immigrants who probably trod through this landscape over a century ago. How splendid and hopeful this sweep of clouds must have been for travelers who were constantly wondering if they should change course.

Channeling the flux capacitor

At the end of March I am headed to Portland, Oregon for the Southern Graphics Council International’s annual conference. This is the first printmaking conference I have ever attended, and as a person without the official blessing of an MFA, I’m a bit nervous. When I registered for the conference, one of the options was to participate in a print exchange.

Printmakers are among the most generous artists I have encountered. They readily share their secret ways of registration and are eager to problem solve with you in Facebook groups. Since they can make more than one image, they share those as well. For the exchange, I needed to produce an edition of 13 images with the paper size of 11 x 14″, and consider the event’s theme of FLUX. I found this theme baffling. Take a look at my finished image — draw your own conclusions — and then I will explain my thinking.

Arboreal Record
© Elizabeth Busey. Arboreal Record. Reduction linocut, 11 x 14in paper size, edition of 13.

The only thing flux brought to my mind was Doctor Emmett Brown’s time traveling DeLorean in the Back to the Future movies. The conference suggested I think about urban change, the DIY culture and the places where the past and the future flow into each other. Not exactly what I do…

While reading definitions of  flux, I found the ideas of energy, change and force fields most illustrative. I finally decided on a stylized tree cross-section. This tree trunk has experienced rapid change, as evidenced by the change from concentric circles to waves. Because of the importance of forest products in the Portland area, this was a nod to a change from clear cutting to a more responsible way of growing and harvesting trees.

The colors of the linocut were inspired by dogwood blossoms, with reddish tips and green interiors. I first printed a flat shape of pale yellow mixed with titanium white. I then added a blend roll of pale pink on the edges, and used a dauber to add green to the center.

Arboreal Record 2 layers
A creamy yellow layer is topped with a pink rainbow roll around the edges and stippled green center.

Carving the concentric rings was a pleasurable way to spend an afternoon. Gold ink created the rings, with a final addition of textured purple around the edges that represented bark.

Arboreal Record block
Carving concentric circles is hypnotizing. Very reminiscent of the vinyl of my childhood.

The best part is that when I leave the conference, I will have a portfolio of ten original prints from other artists to enjoy. Isn’t sharing wonderful?

Time for our Back to the Future marathon…

Sometimes it looks worse before it looks better

Thinking backwards is what reduction printmaking is all about. Carve away what you want to leave exposed on the paper. My current subject — clouds — takes this challenging way of thinking to an entirely new level.

I started this new linocut using the graphite tracing paper guide I created in my last blog. (Click here to read about that first.) After transferring the marks, I used my Foredom drill with engraving bits to remove the places in the clouds that I wanted to stay the white of the Rives BFK paper.

sky graphite one
I have carved away places that I want to stay white. The graphite indicates the areas of sky around the clouds.

Continue reading “Sometimes it looks worse before it looks better”

A square began it all

When I haven’t been working on my water linocut and waiting for the ink to dry, I have been diverted by a small linocut I am preparing for the Center for Contemporary Printmaking’s 5th Biennial Footprint International Competition. Printmakers are charged with creating a work that is 12 inches square. Here is my creation, based on clouds that I captured during an early morning drive along a road that is on a ridge, yielding spectacular panoramas.

©Elizabeth_Busey_Crescendo
©Elizabeth Busey. Crescendo. Reduction Linocut. 12 x 12in, edition of 8, SOLD OUT.

The challenge of the contest is how you create a composition using a square. Before the advent of Instagram, the square seemed to be unpopular, except with the painter Mondrian. Photographers (amateur and professional) seem to be most interested in exploiting the square format. They give advice such as:

  • Fill the frame
  • Be careful about using the rule of thirds
  • Exploit symmetry
  • Use diagonals

I have a special fondness for squares. They show off my circular forms to great advantage. The first real reduction linocut I ever attempted was a four color reduction of the Grand Canyon. Little did I know that my first experiment would lead to many years of reduction linocuts, and many square compositions.

©Elizabeth Busey Grand Canyon Grand River
@ Elizabeth Busey. Grand Canyon, Grand River. Reduction Linocut, edition of 5, 12 x 12in.

Considering the negative…space, that is

I have been trying to integrate what I saw in my travels this summer, and I’ve been pondering the question of negative space…
But before I share my noodlings with you, I need to reveal my sea fan experiment from last month. After printing the light fan shapes and the darker water, I added some coral shapes in the background. It amazes me how adding a brighter and darker color makes the water so much lighter and does add lots more depth. The coral shapes have three colors in order to hint at dimensionality. There is a great deal of activity in the work, and not many places for the eye to rest. I often need to live with a linocut for a while before I decide if it will make it to a frame, or get flipped and used as a test print.
Sea Fan linocut. It doesn’t get a name unless it warrants a frame!
So back to negative space — or in the design world, “white space.” There are lots of famous examples of the use of white space. This about the face/vase illusion for example. In all of these, the positive and negative spaces make your brain work to decide what it is seeing.

Continue reading “Considering the negative…space, that is”