Learning Batik Again

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"Star Of David"

for Laurie

This one was a real bugger to get right. The star is made from a thin sheet of sterling silver. It took me five tries to get the star right. The first 4 were made by trying to cut out the star with tiny metal scissors/snips. The points were very hard to keep straight. Finally, I pulled out the jewelry saw. Since the star is so tiny - the entire pendant is about the size of a penny - it was rather tedious to hold the silver sheet and saw the shape, while keeping all my fingers intact. But it worked. This is by far the nicest one.

It was then fused between 2 sheets of glass, one burgundy and one clear. The heat or something caused the silver to discolor a bit. It's almost as if it tarnished, which is quite possible. Prior to fusing, the silver was quite shiny due to the polishing I had done.

So the entire process was quite laborious. I'm certainly going to have to charge more on any future ones that include silver. But for a friend, I gave her a break. I also figure that it was a great learning experience for me - enclosing silver within the glass.

The pendant goes out in the mail today. I hope she likes it.

Max

"Max"

Recently I helped out with some pet-sitting. This is Max. It wasn't easy getting him to hold still for a quick sketch.

ANNOUNCEMENT

I am just about ready to open up shop on Etsy. The url is going to be connierose.etsy.com . Check it out!

Happy Day

"Happy Day"

One of the prints made from the linoblock I carved.

Happy Day - linoblock

"Happy Day"

Here's the finished linoblock.

Next Linocut

"Happy Day"

This is the next linocut. I've sketched out the basic design and tomorrow I start to cut. It started out as a birthday gift (or card) for my Grandmother's birthday that is coming up soon. As it progressed, I was really happy with the direction it was going, but I'm not so sure this is the design for Grandma now. I may have to do another.

Camping in Michigan

The 19th print out of 25. This one it looks like I loaded on too much ink to the linocut. I like the way the colors came out tho. Nearly all of it is done with Tombow brush markers.

Trying This Again

I think I've managed to make better scans of the limited edition. This is the 1st print in the edition. As you'll see when I post some other prints, I definitely got better as I went along. I've also discovered that I changed the name of the artwork part way thru the project. It started out being called "Michigan Camping", but after the 6th print I somehow switched it to "Camping in Michigan". Oh well. This is my very first try at making an edition. I had 6 "artist proofs". Really only one that I would consider to be done well. The other 5 were sub-par.



This first one was printed on very thick handmade paper. I love the quality of the paper, but it obviously effects the how well the ink takes. The ink in the first 6 prints was also done with water based ink. For prints 7-25 I used oil based ink on Dick Blicks printmaking paper.

Scanning Artwork

Scanning proofs didn't turn out as well as I'd like. I'll have to play around more with the scanner and get a better quality picture. In the meantime....here are some scans of the beginning of the edition.

I tried to manipulate this one and enlarge it. Unfortunately it looses clarity when I blow it up. But since I am at my office now, I'll have to play with it on my own scanner when I get home.