The Making of a New Print: Part 2

For Part 1 of this post, click here.

Finishing a print brings strange feelings sometimes. During the creating process, there’s a sense of hope and joy and optimism – a falling in love with what could be, akin to those thrilling first few dates with someone new.

But then, once the print is finished, it is like being catapulted into your fifth year of marriage. Suddenly the shine and freshness has rubbed off, and you are left to look, unflinchingly, at the reality that remains. Invariably, as with all aging processes, you see both deep beauty and emerging flaws. The ratio depends as much on the care you took in getting to this moment as your sunny or cloudy state of mind.

In Part 1 of this post, I described the first stage of this print – carving the lino block and printing the blue sky and snow. Next, I carved and printed the sun-splashed rocks.

Mountain Linocut Print – Watching Ink Dry

I waited for a week while the ink layers dried, yearning to print the final layer more each day.

Finally, the weekend came and the first ink layers were dry. Time to print again! I spent an hour mixing and testing the perfect shade for the shadowed rocks: a mix of Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue and Mars Black.

Final Linocut Block Inked and Ready To Print

With my pulse racing, I got ready to print this final layer. I was nervous! Would everything line up? Would it turn out the way I envisioned?

And voila – the final print!

The Completed Print

I am very happy with how it turned out. I love the sense of light and the warm-cool feeling of a sunny spring day.

And yet.

Remember that marriage analogy? When I first pulled this print off the block, I saw some flaws and could not “un-see” them. There are improvements to be made. I love this print enough to continue working with it, to give it the full and loving attention it deserves.

New Linocut Block Prepared For Carving

And so, the journey starts again.

Thank you for reading,

All the best to you.

Sophie

 

What You Create Tells Me Who You Are

Mountain adventures feed my soul  – photo @biophile (Instagram)

What you create tells me who you are.

Is that controversial or self-evident?

This past week, I’ve been reading a book called Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. She uses her journalism skills to peer into the contemporary, high profile art world – the kind where grainy screenshots of Instagram stolen from strangers net almost $100,000 and dead cows in tanks of blue formaldehyde sell for 10 million pounds.

I’m reading the book because I’ve always been slightly embarrassed to admit that I don’t really understand that world.

After reading most of Thornton’s book… well… I still don’t get it. But now, I am starting to understand why. I think that world just contradicts my own values too much for comfort.

In exploring why I feel this way, my thoughts turned to the incredible gap in salary in the US. There, the average worker is paid $17 an hour. The top CEOs – and let’s assume they work twice as many hours every day – make $16,000 an hour.

I just don’t believe any one person’s time is worth nearly 1,000 times more than average.

Similarly, I don’t believe that a few darlings of the galleries and critics have a monopoly on genius, talent or good ideas. Yet I think the players in that world would have me believe I am just too provincial to see the true value ($70 million) of white squiggles on a gray canvas.

Evening at a hidden lake on Vancouver Island – photo @biophile (Instagram)

So what DO I value, as an artist? Why do I make what I do? Thinking about this, I came up with a short list of inspirations:

• Clouds
• Pine trees
• Mountains
• Sky
• Simple
• Direct
• Authentic
• Deeply felt
• Adventure
• Freedom

This list is a pretty good representation of my values – of me. It’s a compass. Some days it is tempting to believe my truth is not beautiful enough – that I’d better go try out someone else’s. A list of my truths is a reminder to make the work that is most deeply my own. It’s like digging a well. Finding water requires staying in the same spot for a while.

Garibaldi Provincial Park never fails to inspire – photo @biophile (Instagram)

I truly wonder if the Twomblys of today are going deep into their own wells, or if they are snickering behind their fat wallets. Who are they? What motivates them to create what they do? What does their list look like? This is not a judgement, just a curiosity that I’ll never see answered.

And maybe that is the central idea here. My nature could never give rise to their art, nor theirs to mine. Our jobs are to simply keep digging. By what we create, you will see who we are.

Creative Projects Make Their Own Timing

Creative projects have timelines of their own. They can rarely be forced to enter the world, and sometimes a good deal of faith is required to wait for them to be born.

Take this print, for example. I started working on this a year ago. I carved the linoleum block for the black ink, then printed this. Then I tried hand-watercolouring the black-and-white print (shown in the image).

Three Trees (Winter)

I love how it looks, except the paper warped and buckled with the water, and would not become flat again.

I knew I wanted to complete this as a multi-colour relief print, so it would stay lovely and flat when framed. Yet for a long there was some block I couldn’t get beyond. I hung this first version on my clothesline, and waited and waited and worked on other things.

Then, the other day, I finally felt a wave of energy. Over a few days I carved and printed the first four layers (shown below).

Now, I am waiting for the ink to fully dry before I can lay down that final, rich black on top. And the funny thing is, even though I let it sit for a year, I can hardly wait!

I think there’s a lesson somewhere in here, about persistent and active patience. We know when we’re procrastinating. At those times, we know what the next step is, although we can’t make ourselves take it. But there are other times when we can’t see the path ahead.

In these times, I think our job is to remain open. To keep listening. We are slowly collecting know-how and new information. When we are ready to move forward, that quiet, tender voice inside of us will let us know.

Four layers down on Three Trees (Winter) linocut print

Have a lovely week, my friend, and thank you for reading.

-Sophie

The Making of a New Print: Part 1

Isn’t it fun to see how artists create their work? I always love when artists show just how they create their beautiful pieces. It usually gives me a much deeper appreciation for the high degree of care they put into their work. Linda Cote is a great example, I’ve learned so much from her posts.

The print I’m showing below is evolving right now, in my studio, so you are watching as it comes together! The final print will be on 9×12 inch paper.

Watercolour sketch about to be turned into a linocut print

First, I create a sketch with watercolour. This one is based on a photo I took while backpacking in Olympic National Park. I love the design, so I’m confident enough to invest the many hours it will take to create the final print.

At this point, I create a more tightly rendered version of the drawing, showing each layer exactly as I will cut them. The photo below shows this drawing on the left, and stage 1 of the print on the right.

For the blue layer, I trace this drawing carefully in pencil, marking each place where I want blue ink to show. I then flip this paper over onto my rubber block and rub it with the back of a spoon until the drawing is transferred to the block. It’s ok if my blue layer overlaps the dark layer a bit, because the dark will go on top.

I then carve away all of the areas where I don’t want blue pigment. This takes many hours for a complex print. I love this part – carving deep grooves into the rubber, following the curves of the mountain with my knife – this effort makes me feel deeply connected to both the landscape and the final print.

 

Drawing on the left, print in progress on the right

Next, I mix my inks. I use Akua water soluble inks. These are environmentally friendly soy based inks that clean up with water – no need to use solvents. They also do not contain toxic pigments like cadmium (heavy metal found in oil and acrylic paints), which is great, because I’m absentminded and sometimes end up with ink where it doesn’t belong.

For my blue layer, I’d like a paler, more intense blue for the sky, and a warmer, darker, more purple blue for the snow in the shadows.

Mixing up just the right shades of blue

Next, I roll the ink out onto my block using a brayer (the thing that looks like a mini paint roller). The photo below shows the inked up block, ready for printing.

Rolling the ink onto the block

Now, I carefully lay my paper face down onto the inked block. Because I will have three separate blocks, it’s very important that I line everything up exactly right. I use a frame from an old canvas. I place the small block of wood on top of everything, and stand on it! I then move it around, so that I’ve stood on top of the whole print, ensuring an even transfer of ink to the paper.

Pressing the paper into the inked block

After this is complete, I carefully peel the paper off of the block, revealing the print. This is a thrilling part of the process- I get to see if it worked! At this point, I make any final adjustments to the block and ink colour, and continue printing multiple copies.

Print after it has been pulled off of the block

So there it is – my process for creating linocut prints.

This one has two detailed layers to come. Click here for Part 2!

 

Too Tired to Make Art?

How to be gentle but firm with yourself

Cameron Pass (5×7 Relief Print)

Last night I came home after work and found myself too tired to make art. I flopped down on my bed and lay there for an hour, staring glazed-eyed into Twitter and wondering what was wrong with me that I couldn’t make myself go into the studio.

Reading art blogs, it’s easy to get the idea that other artists are brimming with constant creativity and are whistling while they work long into the night. When I’m in a bit of a slump, I compare myself to their online personas, and start to worry that if I don’t play cruel taskmaster to myself, I will get lazy and unmotivated stop making art altogether.

Here’s how I tackled this beastly sequence of thoughts:

First, I was gentle. I acknowledged that I have some good reasons for being tired (two additional hours of exercise each day, a recently completed commission for the largest print I’ve made to date, recent technical challenges with some prints).

Then, I was firm. I reasoned that, despite being tired, I could take a small step in service of creativity. I stepped into the studio and committed to just staying there and keeping busy – anything qualified, as long as I could honestly say it would keep my art moving forward. I ended up using the time for administrative tasks – signing prints and cleaning, readying the studio for another burst of creative inspiration.

Finally, I was gentle again. I accepted that this was “enough work” for the day (this was the hardest part) and reminded myself that life and art is neither a marathon nor a sprint, but both, replete with injuries and triumphs and all of the other ups and downs inherent in any worthwhile endeavour.

The gentle-firm-gentle sandwich – it worked for me, and tasty, too. Maybe it can work for you!

Wishing you happiness in all your worthwhile endeavours.

Sophie

I think I’m in Love… with Printmaking

In Progress: Print of Mount Olympus

What did it feel like when you met your soul mate?

Did you know right away? Did it strike you after a few dates? Or did it take years to feel a slowly growing realization that you had found someone you could not live without?

When it comes to art mediums, I’ve had a promiscuous history filled with flings and periods of serial monogamy. I’ve experimented with pencil, pastels, embroidery, acrylics, ink, book-binding, watercolour and oil paints. And somehow, with all this experimenting… well, I’ve had a lot of fun, but none have felt quite right.

And now… I am almost afraid to say this, lest I jinx things, but I think I might have found “the one”.

From my very first print, things have just felt right. I remember, it was a small bird, about 2 inches square. I was using a soft rubber block that had a tendency to crumble, and sticky, gummy Speedball acrylic inks, but it didn’t matter – the moment I pulled the paper away from the rubber and revealed my first print, I was enthralled. I still am.

Why?

Printmaking feels a little like climbing up a steep trail to a mountain pass. It can be hard work, but with every hundred feet gained, the view gets better and better. You feel joy as you watch the view unfold, and you feel the delicious anticipation of what new vista will appear when you finally reach the pass. These thrills pull you onward so strongly you hardly notice any discomfort.

With a new print, you have an idea of what the final image will look like. And as you progress with each layer of colour your view improves. But it is only when the last layer of ink is applied that you can see the final image – and just like a beautiful hike, that anticipation is what pulls you along.

I also love how tactile and kinesthetic block printing is. As I carve out the image, it’s like I’m creating new topographies. It is calm, repetitive and meditative. There’s a thrill in seeing a map of rivers, peaks and valleys form in the carved areas. And when that is done, my whole body gets to help with rolling out the ink and pressing the paper down into the colour.

I may still be in the starry-eyed honeymoon phase, but I think I’ve met my match.

If you are struggling and spending more time feeling blocked than inspired… could it be that you have not found your soul-medium yet?

Balancing between learning and knowing

Learning and growing with Eggplants and Peppers

In my day job, some tasks are easy… data entry, spreadsheet manipulation, that sort of thing. I like these jobs. I know how to do them. I can listen to music, or a podcast, or daydream. But if I had to do this stuff all the time, I would quickly get bored and frustrated.

The easy jobs are balanced with very hard tasks – the kind that make me want to get up and escape and make tea every five minutes (anything to get away from the anxiety in my belly). These jobs are hard to begin, but once I’m in them, I get happy and interested and want give someone a high-five when I’m done. Usually these involve creating something new – writing an article, making connections between concepts, or putting together a proposal. These provide great highs, but if I had to do them all the time, I think I would become a nervous wreck.

The balance is what makes it a perfect fit.

I get to push my comfort zone, learn and grow with the hard stuff, and I get to relax and indulge in podcasts during the easy tasks. The sum of the parts has me happy and fulfilled.

It just clicked that it might be the same with making art.

I love printmaking because so much of it is the “easy” tactile work of carving, rolling out the ink, lining up the paper just so, standing on top of the paper to press it into the ink, and repeating the process. It feels very comfortable, too, knowing I can rely on a good result most of the time.

Painting, on the other hand, is decidedly hard. I have fights with myself about whether I want to paint at all and wonder if that’s Stephen Pressfield’s “Resistance” talking. In the ugly stages (as all paintings seem to have), I get irritable and grumpy. But in the midst of that discomfort is where I learn and grow the most, and I think that’s why I keep returning. I just couldn’t do it all the time.

Maybe, just like at work, a key to staying happy is finding the right balance between the discomfort of growing and the pleasure of knowing.

The Magic of Happy Accidents

Daily Sketches in February

Over the past month, the lovely @Biophiled and I have been taking part in #OpusDailyPractice on Twitter. This is a challenge, hosted by a west coast art supply store, to create something every day for the month of February, and post it online. So far we have not missed a day.

My biggest lesson, over the past 20 days, has been to surrender to the magic of happy accidents.

I started this challenge wanting to learn how to draw more accurately, and I have been using a slow, methodical approach of sight-measuring every major shape and angle. It works, and to me the result is worth the effort. The problem was, for the first few days, I would paint in the same way – tentative and uncertain, using a small brush and small strokes. Sometimes it worked, but more often it felt stilted and stiff.

Then one day, on a whim, I started laying down long, sweeping, confident strokes with my small brush. The first happy accident. I had this feeling that my body had taken over and was acting on instinct.

The next day, I drew lemons, and their sunny zest must have permeated my mood. I found a bigger brush in my kit – about three times the size and never before used – and drew everything twice the size that I saw it. Using this bigger brush, I started laying down long, wide swaths of paint, overlapping them, painting fast, intuitively, letting my mind lie still. I would paint in this way for one shape, then look at the drawing and the lemons, and make any corrections, then slip back into intuitive mode.

When I was finished, I took a photo of my drawing. Looking at that photo, I have the strangest out-of-body feeling – I see depth and texture and life in those lemons that I do not know how to create. I could not repeat that drawing. There was some magic that happened while I wasn’t looking – or more accurately while I wasn’t trying so hard.

Is this the secret to invoking a little magic? Create a framework (in this case an accurate drawing), and then let go and play within it?

So far it seems to be working.

Accepting your own emerging style

Whose work inspires you? Have you ever kept an “inspiration book” where you gather images you love? How much do those influences find their way into your work? How much do you compare yourself to them?

That’s the question I was grappling with this weekend.

If Life was a Western Movie (in progress)

For a couple of years, I’ve kept a book in which I paste images of paintings by artists that I most admire: like  Skip Whitcomb, Scott Christensen, Josh Elliot, Matt Smith and Michael Workman.

These are the artists whose paintings that make my breath catch in my throat. Their paintings all have a high level of realism, and they sometimes have these gorgeous abstract textures that appear when you look up close.

My own paintings seem to be headed in another, more graphic direction – maybe a little more Billy Schenck if I consider the painting I was working on this weekend (If Life was a Western Movie). I love his work too… but it’s not in my inspiration book.

This raised some questions. Am I working in a more graphic style because it seems easier? Or because I’m afraid I’ll never be able to pull off the style I seem to love best? Should I be working toward painting more like the people I more admire? How would I even do that?

As I was going to sleep last night, I realized something. I am not any of those people. I have my own circumstances, history, and personality. Seems obvious, right? But those facts of my existence bind me to certain ways of working and growing. I may never paint like the people I most admire, or I may, or I may come to admire others instead. It doesn’t really matter.

The only thing I can do is just keep trying to make the art that emerges from my paintbrush, and continue loving the ride regardless of the results. Then I can watch what comes of it with curiosity. That’s got to be more fun than trying to be someone else.

Maybe I should paste that old quote into my notebook: “be yourself, everyone else is already taken”.

Just keep moving, whatever it takes

Watercolour Travel Sketch Kit

I have come to adopt the following philosophy around creating: It does not matter what you create, or how, as long as you keep moving forward.

For a long time, I carried guilt about not being able to stick to one art form. I started with pencil, then switched to pastel, then to ink and watercolour, acrylics, oils, and now printmaking.

I’ve read Malcom Gladwell’s books, I know all about the 10,000 hours it takes to be great at something. This made me wish I could just stick to one medium. (It’s true, I do want to be great at something.)

But then I realized – I am probably still creating not in spite of these changes, but because of them. They were necessary adaptations, ways to keep moving forward.

And that’s worth a lot.

Owl stuffy sketch made before breakfast

Since I started making art (2007), I’ve moved 9 times, including 5 major moves to another province or country. I’ve changed jobs, I’ve gotten a master’s degree (unrelated to art), I started a business, changed careers entirely, and fell in love.

It’s kind of a wonder that I’ve managed to keep making art at all. Without adapting to my circumstances, I probably would have stopped. After all, it’s hard to pack paints and large canvases when you move somewhere with two duffel bags, but if you are willing to switch to sketching, you are in luck.

My largest painting ever (2×4′) in its new home

To illustrate this a bit more – after being in one place for a while, I painted a large mountain scene (2 x 4’). The process was glorious, I loved everything about it. But, I could barely walk around in the 200 square foot studio apartment I lived in while I was painting it.

And I moved shortly after that.

Owl toy sketched while teaching a class

So as much as I aspire to paint big, breathtaking landscapes one day, right now I’m just doing whatever it takes to keep moving. Little sketches before breakfast. Small prints, small paintings, practicing composition and perspective. Anything. And you know what? Every one of these actions adds up to incremental improvements in my skill. And one day I’ll have a large room where I can paint big – and I will be ready, and all of these winding side trails will have led me ther