Arted States: engraving

Thursday, 7 June 2012

New fossils discovered

Made some new digital work over the last couple of days, for the first time in ages. My entry for the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers "RE-Open" exhibition at the Bankside Gallery in London. Got to wait until July to find out whether anything has been accepted now.

To produce the new prints, I reworked some of the unlikely realms images by using them to make 3D 'relief sculptures' which I then lit to look like they were engraved on various surfaces. The original idea was to have them on a stone surface to make them look more fossil-like, but I found the lack of colour wasn't quite working so I ended up, after some trial and error, with something that I think looks more like a hammered copper sheet... Whatever, they're still called 'fossils'!

The premise behind unlikely realms is that there is a whole collection of 'virtual' fauna and flora, both macroscopic and microscopic, to be documented. They exist only within the computer, but can be drawn and photographed just the same as real natural organisms. More coming soon as part of my ongoing project Synthesis.

One last one with a different surface - I decided at the last minute to do something a bit more colourful. During experimentation I also found a process which makes the 'fossils' look as a if they are engraved on slate - will try to do some if I have time.

For the techies, no - they are not just made using the 'emboss' filter in Photoshop / these are actual 3D models lit using XenoDream from Stirling-Thornton.

Saturday, 10 December 2011

A wander through the heart of the artist... Entry for the Oriel Davies open 2012

New drawing I've entered for the Oriel Davies open exhibition for 2012 - a good show to enter work for in that the first prize is not only £1500, but also a one-man show in 2013. Now that would be useful! Vivi-Mari has entered as well ... fingers crossed.

Title - "Functional Pumping Heart Model". Original drawing in sepia ink and clay pencil on handmade khadi paper, with transfer printed elements including a photo by Vivi-Mari (which is why it's only 'sort of' a self-portrait - I did lots of things to it, but the original photo is hers - I guess that really makes it our first collaboration - another one coming soon!). A symbolic journey through the many byways of the heart. I thought of the old idea of phrenology, assigning mental functions to different areas of the head, and transferred the idea to the assigning emotional functions (and dysfunctions) to areas of the heart. Not for sale online yet, until I hear whether it's been selected for the show (mid Feb), but I'm always willing to entertain offers. Now.. on with the next piece, in between decorating the house ready for Christmas, etc. etc.....

I'm really into the Indian khadi handmade paper at the moment - it's 100% recycled cotton rag (made of offcuts from the t-shirt industry), completely non-acidic (i.e. archive quality), and has a superb heavy textured surface for the drawing techniques I'm using. This is the first piece where I've used transfer printing, which I think looks great for including what are essentially collaged elements - Vivi-Mari's photo portrait, and the text captions I made up to add to the heart. The heart drawing itself is based on an anatomical engraving from the original edition of 'Gray's Anatomy'.