Dress Sixty

Happy Leap Year Day
Happy Birthday Elsie Booth Davis
Happy Birthday Darla

February is over, 29 skirts... done and done... can't wait to pull on some blooo jeans tomorrow morning!

Dress Fifty Nine

Dress Fifty Eight

Dress Fifty Seven

Many of you may have seen my copper plate etching "Police Call Box" but I bet very few have seen the series she came from.  While hanging out in the Laughing Lizard Cafe one winter break, I started sketching "dressed-up" versions of a stone carving by Mike Murphy.... here is a rough sketch of the carving:

and here are the ladies all dressed up:

They are all just silly imaginings - doodled to pass the time.  Here is a picture of the etching inspired by this last drawing:

Dress Fifty Six

So... here is a fabulous Guest Dress!  My daughter drew this to give me a day's vacation from this 365 day project. Check out the color combinations in the groupings of "scales" on the stole portion of the outfit.... I have been informed that they were specifically grouped and calculated!

I especially like the hair and the fact that the neck decorations could be either a fanciful tattoo, or might be the skin colouring of a new alien species... only SHE can tell you the truth.

Dress Fifty Five

Sometimes... sometimes when the mind has made its plans, reality is not on board... and sometimes, I guess I'll have to bend the rules and dip into the archives for a daily post. hopefully my propensity for more than one dress a day will make up for the fact that its not fresh...

but then it's fresh to you,

and semi fresh to me (memory being like swiss cheese and all...) so... flexibility wins out over the other option which is to say ah... scrap it all, I'm not doing one tonight!

so here goes... doodles aplenty
a few years old and plenty weird, but with some variety from the poufy style which has to be a relief to someone!

Dress Fifty Four

Dress Fifty Three

a snapshot of my first wood carving... I think... the methods were certainly deja vu but I can't remember carving wood exactly ...ever...
print on left, carving on right... blurry phone print.. better versions to come in future...!

I like the feel of the wood chipping away, the randomness of the splinters, the toughness against the grain.  Wood carving is very cool.

Dress Fifty Two

Dress Fifty One

Dress Fifty

Some random scribbles... quantity perhaps making up for quality?!

Dress Forty Nine

Puffy Paint Prints

I'm pretty excited about these!

First print:

 I applied purple ink over the plate, wiped the overdress and bodice areas, and then applied red and purple ink in a strokes pattern with a brush.

This second one is a ghost of the one above with drips of ink squished with a paper towel.  I really like how the drops of red on the overskirt "exploded" in the press.  I also added a couple of extra layers of paper and another flexi plate to really squeeze off as much ink in the second pressing.

This next piece could be considered a second ghost... I did add some speckles with drab purple in the background as well as some dabs from the inked up paper towels.

This next piece is a true second monotype, not a ghost relative of the ones above... you can see that i went a little crazy with the red overpainting and the pressure of the press rolled the ink right off the image.  I achieved the lacy underskirt and bodice effects by using a pencil scriggled around in the ink right on the plate.  Same for the celestial object, only i used a q-tip.

The piece below is a quick blotting of the above piece prior to the application of red and prior to going into the press. You can see that the blotting process pulled up a lot of the ink that had been lying on top of the puffy paint ridges.  I gently placed a piece of paper on the plate and very softly ran my hand over it to prevent the over bleed through and down effects....

 

Here is an image from the back of the last print.... see how deeply the puffy paint embosses into the paper... and that red ink... smooshed right through... thankfully i had used many layers of protective paper and did not stain the press blankets... a BIG no-no in a print studio!

Dress Forty Eight

Dress Forty Seven

Dress Forty Six

Dress Forty Five

As mentioned last week, (Dress 33) here is a familiar shape....(although it is reversed)

Using the new "Puffy Paint" method of printing, I made two original monotypes and two ghost images from a flexi plexi plate, using the same puffy paint illustration as my base.

You can see bubbles in the main part of the dress that resulted from over mixing the transparent medium.  When I pulled back the plate, the sticky ink pulled up as well and left tiny bubble marks.

This second one is not truly a monotype because I re-applied the red and grey ink (too much by the looks of the bleed!)... however, if you look closely, you can see the dramatic embossed lines from adding another plate during this pass through the press in an attempt to force as much ink off the plate during a ghost press.

I cleaned the plate and once again began by rolling a thin layer of brown ink over the plate.  Then I used only pure inks this time, adding a mottled red and black to the top and sleeves.  I love how the space around the dark lines remains white since the puffy paint prevents both the brayer and the paper from touching the plate.

 In this second pass, I added an extra plate again to maximise the pressure and get as dark a print as possible.  Notice how much more of the mottling is evident in the sleeve and how during a ghost image, even though the puffy paint ridges are just as prominent, the ink has now migrated close to those lines and there are no white "shadows".

Dress Forty Four

Messing around in the print room with L. on Sunday... first with white ink on neon orange....





























Then on some teal paper...

Then broke out all the old plates and mixed in some red and made pink prints and then blue for some purple prints...

And then... really went to town with the puffy print process... I just love this! L invented a whole new way of printing.... Here is my dress for the day... photographed after the print was made but before the plate was taken off the paper... doesn't it look cool? the prints are much more subtle and have great indentations in the paper were the puffy paint pressed in... but I always prefer the cartoonish dark outlines... hmmm  .... tell me what You think

These are all phone pics... I'll take better ones after wednesday's class. What a happy print day at the LAC!

Dress Forty Three

Dress Forty Two

Dress Forty One

Remembering my brief stint as a stitcher for the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, I drew this in a morning mood of nostalgia

Dress Forty

Woodblock (style) prints! We cut EZ-cut rubber eraser type material in print class last night.  This is an apron... slightly tangential to a dress, but still within the parameters of the endeavor.

"A dress for a dress..."

Printed with Akua ink

Dress Thirty Nine

So... how do I find time to do what I love? Arrive at Yoga 1 hour early, sit in the parking lot and sketch, sketch, sketch.  Otherwise, I'd be at home, doing dishes, running around cleaning up, checking laundry and email, you know the drill... never a moment of peace at home with every thing shouting out little messages, reminders or complaints.... "I'm so dirty, sweep me, I haven't been paid yet, fold me, feed me, file me..."  I'd rather be a little cold, really early for things, and still get some art accomplished.

I've been thinking a lot about my friend who has just lost her mother to cancer and since she is partial to fleur de lis, they appeared in the background....

Dress Thirty Eight

Kindof a cheat perhaps.... an old drawing - a doodle on the back of one of my sister's lesson plans, scanned and digitally layered and colored.  I like it! even tho the drawings are clunky, they have a rhythm....

I scanned both sides of the paper, altered the b/w to a grungy sepia tone, then colored in the garment shapes in photoshop and inserted the text side image layer at 55% in between the illustration and color layers - then brought the color layer down to 80% so the text barely shows through.

Dress Thirty Seven

Here's a victorian paper dress... Surrounded by valentines, valentine making and valentine supplies, I reached for browns and gold and created yet another typical 3/4 silhouette bustle dress... i'm on a jag it seems...

Dress Thirty Six

Here are some more interesting impressions - both made from rubbings from a wooden spoon.  You can see the marks from the spoon in the red ink around the dress.  Clearly I was not going for a fully inked plate... just too excited to see how this would come out.  In both instances, there was a piece of fabric lace sandwiched between the layers.  The first image was made with the illustration masking the paper, but releasing remnant ink, and the second is a ghost of the first. Less ink left to transfer, but still a great silhouette.

Dress Thirty Five

As was posted yesterday, we are on a theme with one particular dress.  Here, on the right, is the original sketch - showing the red ink it picked up when masking the monotype and appearing dark because the opposite side was rendered blue.  The print on the left is the result of sandwiching the piece on the right between two white pages and putting it through the press.  You can see the brayer marks from me laying down ink on my plate everywhere but the area of the dress.  You can also see my finger prints from holding down this mask as I brayered all around the cut-out original sketch.  The sleeve kept catching up in the roller and almost ripped off, but in the end, these ghost/surprise prints are the most interesting to me.