Back from the depths!

Well, what can I say...   it's been far too long, and clearly I've completely forgotten to get on here and actually keep people in the loop.   My apologies to any of you who left comments that I never returned... they simply didn't make it to me.

Anyways, onto the goods!

I've been very hard at it in the studio.  I'm currently continuing my work at Open Studio where I'm not only doing my own work, but doing some one on one teaching and custom printing with other artists.  It's had me doing a number of different kinds of projects as a result.

In preparation for a group exhibition that I'm part of in the new year I've been revisiting a few of my previous plates to make them better.  I added to my Canis Mykiss plate which was initiated at Il Bisonte last year... I'm now onto printing the edition for it, and it looks much richer in tone.   Also, I've managed to fail a second time with my Lepus Tentortoise plate and now for the 3rd time I'm in the process of recreating it. The real scoop here was that it had a really terrible hatching texture that resulted from a dull rocker.  I simply couldn't live with it and decided that it would be worth starting again last month. I sharpened my rocker, got a new piece of copper, and sinking about 150 hours into hand rocking and scraping out the image I was left with a very similar texture... ARGH!!!  This got me thinking and I thought maybe it would be worth while making myself a little rocking aid to help with getting a much more even grain and to help eliminate wrist strain.  Here's what it looks like:

Low and behold, this was just the trick and I'm now about a 3rd of the way through the Version 3.0 of this plate.  I suppose the old saying "Third Time A Charm" really rings true here.  Anyways, it's not done yet, and I don't want to jinx things  so I'll leave by saying things are going well.  I'll post a picture when it's done.

Below is an etching I completed in October....  In Search Of Love

Stay tuned for more updates coming very soon!

Image Interview

I had the great pleasure of being image-interviewed by the talented photographer and creator of  The Image Interview , Joel Yum. It was a great experience and it's worth checking out the work he did with me as well as all of the other artists he features on his site.

The Image Interviews Laine Greenway

The Last Days At Il Bisonte

All great things have as start, and all great things have an end... so was the case this week as my year long stage at Il Bisonte came to it's finale. After 1400 hours of hard work, learning, and intense progress in my personal development as an artist / printmaker I said my final goodbyes to my table, the presses, the tools, and the wonderful studio mates and mentors that I've had such pleasure being with this year.  

It was a bitter sweet occasion as all of our work is currently featured at the Archivio Storico here in Firenze until January 5th, 2011... a real triumph to the hard work we have all put in to produce the fruits of our labour.  

The celebration of course came with great accounts of how we all progressed together and the plans to continue to develop this thriving group of artists into the future... to keep the connections we made this year alive and well for years to come.

I wanted to share a few shots from the studio and the environment that I have become so used to getting to work and play in everyday!  While I don't get to continue working here, these pictures as well as the great memories serve as wonderful reminders of what a special place Il Bisonte is to print at...

The Lookout

I put the finishing touches on an older Mezzotint plate that I've been floating around for some time now.  It was a bit of a different approach to the medium for me as I decided to simply prepare the plate as usual but sketch as if it were paper. Generally I create my imagery before and then use that as the basis for creating the plate, however this time I wanted to experiment to see if i could bring myself to dive in directly onto the prepared copper.  To say the least it was a little nerve wracking at first, but I then became really comfortable working the plate directly from my imagination.  Enjoy!

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Monoprinting

Needing a bit of a break from the tight control I have to keep while working in mezzotint, I decided that I would take the last couple weeks of class and focus my attention towards slightly more liberating approaches to print.  I've done very little work with monoprint before, and for me this was really almost like a start at something totally fresh.  I really enjoyed working in monoprint and I think that for the final week at the studio I'll continue to make a couple more as I'm not prepared to be starting any more large projects before my return to Canada.  Here's what I came up with...

Latest off the press

I've been working hard this past week on completing a small edition for our final class portfolio. Here's what I came up with...

I managed to successfully pull 20 prints for the edition as well as 5 good artist proofs.

Enjoy!

Some prints

I wanted to get on here and post the actual prints from the last 2 mezzotint plates I ran. The first one isn't well executed in my opinion based on a number of factors, but primarily because of the strong texture and the lack of contrast and softness within the image. There are also areas that started to blow out and become overly grey as the plate quickly degraded... i think this was all a case of how it was originally prepared right from the get go... doomed from day one!  Good learning with this one however, and through my failure with this one came the success of the next which is the second. It came out better than expected and I was happy to achieve a soft preparation of the plate as well as the strong sense of light and contrast of the image itself.  I think on a personal note it's some of my best work to date. Enjoy!