Magdalena WiP

For my Printmaking II class, we are starting off with collagraphs, which is a cross between collage and printmaking.  Various textures are glued to a board and used to make prints.

We had to use a song so I went with Magdalena by A Perfect Circle.  This is roughly what the textures are going to look like.  It's going to be really tricky making dollars out of contact paper.  I am so not looking forward to that. 

I've been living in the print lab all weekend and I've only done one print.  The rest has been discovering how not to do this assignment.  I had to trace the little pole dancers five or six times before figuring out how it should have been done.  I just hope they are still recognized as humanoid in the final print.

Now onto the fun of cutting and gluing all the textures!  Yay?

Army of Toys WiP 1

For my Poster Design class, we are doing gig posters, so I decided to do Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys, who I heard back in October when I went to New York.

I was going to go with a straight-forward idea of a group of broken toys and use Tinkertoys and blocks as letters.  Then I found pictures from the Island of the Dolls and thought maybe I'd do something with creepy dolls.  Based on my professor's suggestion of just using a single doll head and maybe putting the text in the hair, I made this, combining that idea and the band's motif of squids in their publicity photos.

I'm not sure if I'm going to make the text separate using a preexisting font, or try to make the test more of the piece.

I am going to use printmaking to make the final piece.

Kitsune Process

My reduction woodcut was a kitsune, the Japanese word for fox. They can disguise themselves as women to seduce men. More info can be found in my previous entry.

Out of all the processes I learned during this semester, this was my favorite. If I can get in the print lab during the summer, I think I'll do some personal work in this way.

Female Monsters Series 1

My final print for the etching assignment in Printmaking. This is part of what I hope will be an ongoing series of female monsters.

The first is a pananggalan, a Malaysian monster that detaches its head at night and drinks the blood of children and pregnant women. More info can be found here.

From here I decided to continue with a motif of heads surrounded by undulating, twisted tubes of some sort.

The second is Medusa, the Gorgon from Greek mythology that was killed by Perseus. Her hair was snakes and her eyes turned victims to stone.

The third is a Japanese yokai known as a Rokurokubi, a woman whose neck stretches at night so she can play tricks on drunk men and fools. I tried to replicate the look of a tradition ukiyo-e print.

All are copper etchings. I used Aquatint on all three, and softground on the latter two.

References:
Penangalan
Yokai