The Visual Sentence

I have been experimenting with a process of assembling prints (from the gel plate and foam relief plates) into pieces, which reminds me of stringing words together to make sentences. Each print has a few elements - they are not just all-over patterns - and combining them offers a fresh approach to 'composing'. I learned this process from Joyce Silverstone at North Country Studio Workshops last January. See my post about it here. Whereas in a collage, your substrate determines the boundaries of the piece, in 'scrolling' (Joyce's term for the process), you assemble the parts without a substrate and make up the boundaries as you go along.

 

Above are a few pieces that I assembled visually, and then scanned the parts and put them together digitally. These are available as prints and products on Pixels/Fine Art America.

I will be teaching "The Visual Sentence" later this year in Montreal, and next year at Hudson River Valley Art Workshops. Stay tuned to my calendar.

Printmaking at North Country Studio Workshops

I try to take one workshop every year, but it did not happen in 2019 because I was saving it up to take a workshop with Joyce Silverstone at North Country Studio Workshops. NCSW offers about a dozen different workshops, all in the same week, every other year, using the fabulous facilities at Bennington College. Bennington in the winter is not exactly a vacation destination, so you get to focus on studio work and commune with artists in all media from all over the place for a solid five days. It is a beautiful place to be in the winter: peaceful, with gorgeous views and no distractions from the art. Joyce is on the faculty at Zea Mays Printmaking in Northampton, MA.

Here are a few photos from my experience at this workshop:

Putting together a few of my black and white prints

Amy carving a test plate

The beehive of a studio

Another student's work up on the wall

Black and white work of several students

One of my assembled pieces, as hypothesis

Another of my hypothetical assemblages

Ditto the above

And another. This is SO FUN to put pieces of prints together in different ways, and then photo graph them. I did actually put one together more or less permanently.

Here are some more (and better) photos on North Country's Instagram feed. Enjoy!

Golden Artist Colors Conference

Just heading back from the "Golden Gathering" in Florida, where I got a fresh dose of information on Golden products, but so much more!  Re-connecting with colleagues, meeting artists from all over the world, taking workshops and attending super informative talks and demos. Here are a few pix.  I'll put together more posts when I get home, with more links and video. 

Here is me (orange T-shirt, gray hair) in Adria Arch's class on teaching intuitive painting.  She is right up my alley, and gave me some FABULOUS ideas for improving my teaching.  We did some really fun exercises that got us painting immediately, totally engaged in the process, without thinking and agonizing.  She got us to tap into that direct line between intuition and process.  I will be trying these in upcoming workshops.

Here are a few things that came out of one of Adria's exercises.

The venue wasn't too shabby, though it was not this sunny. 

I took a watercolor workshop with Bianka Guna, in which we used Golden's new Qor watercolors.  Yes, that is Q  O  R, Qor, pronounced "core".  So I'll be experimenting with them in my studio and share with you.  The colors are intense and rich, and they work beautifully on many different grounds and substrates.

Here is Bianka.  She is an engaging teacher, very entertaining as well as knowledgeable.

This is one of the collograph plates I made in Shari Pratt's workshop.  I have some better pix, which I'll share in a later post.  We used all kinds of textural materials and many of Golden's texture gels to make printing plates. 

Then we printed using OPEN acrlyics, which have a long long long l o n g drying time. They are great for monoprinting because you can take your time working the paint into/on the plate.

Melanie Matthews

One more person I want to introduce you to (if you don't already know her) is Melanie Matthews.  I attended her slide talk on using Pinterest, and found her to be one of the most generous artists I've met, in terms of sharing information.  Funny, fun, a GREAT presenter.  I would take a workshop with her any day.  Check out her Pinterest Boards and follow her.  OMG, what a wealth of carefully curated images she shares.

Printmaking Unleashed - a Giveaway

Well, Traci Bautista has done it again, produced a book packed with inspiration, ideas, and techniques.  This time her focus is printmaking.  In the broad sense.  It includes techniques on making rubbing plates, stencils, stamps, and other tools for creative mark making, as well as inspiration for using them. 

Browse this book on Amazon.

One technique that was quick-and-easy, but totally caught my eye, was a method for stamping lines using rolled up cardboard.

Here is a rolled up piece of corrugated card that I used as a stamp in the piece below.

The black lines are made by stamping the corrugated card.  The white marks in the upper right are made using a piece of mat board.

This is just a strip of ordinary corrugated cardboard I used as a stamp in the following pieces.

More of my mark-making practice

Here I used both the corrugated card and the regular cardboard, in the lower section of this piece.  They make very different line qualities.

More cardboard lines, in black

And more, in the upper right, contrasting with the paint marker, crayon, and graphite marks.

Here is the giveaway package!

I am offering a giveaway that includes:

• a copy of Traci's book
• A kit of printmaking tools (provided by Traci, actually)
• A pad of Strathmore Printmaking paper, 8"x10"
• and a set of Koi brush pens (think: markers)

Just comment on this post with your thoughts on any of the above, and I will do a random drawing on Friday, August 15.  YOU MUST CHECK THE BLOG ON FRIDAY and contact me if you are the winner, or provide a contact e-mail in your comment.  Please make sure your name uniquely identifies you.  Not just "Mary", but "Mary K in Indiana", or something like that.

Take a look at this book even if you don't win the giveaway.  It is lots of fun to dip into for new technique ideas.  Traci uses EVERYTHING in service of mark making!