Pastiche-d

Phew! Its all finally over (apart from the Visual Culture essay which is due on Thursday, but I'm not really in writing mood right now, so you get updates instead!)

So, this is what I handed in as my final pieces for my pastiche of French poster artist Paul Colin. the top is from a picture of me from a performance long ago in my dancing days, and the bottom is based on some of my favourite Swedish dancers, Hanna Zetterman and Mattias Lundmark.

If you look back at my posts you'll see that I wasn't particularly happy with my last image - and I worked out the reasons why - ie Colin really exaggerates his proportions and there is a lot of variation in his lineweight. So I went back into the lithography studio and spent a whole day on two new images. This time too I used pen and lithographic ink (touche) instead of the lithographic crayon. I think these are better than the last one, but still not quite perfect ...

I did a presentation on Paul Colin, and why and how he had inspired me, and showed off my final pieces last Tuesday. The presentation went fine - I've done enough public speaking in my time! And the tutors were happy. The crit being that I need to work more on loosening up my drawings to really achieve work like his. Fortunately they also conceded that I managed far better (on the loosening up) in my sketchbook where I was practicing drawing, and the real hurdle had been dealing with drawing on lithographic plates.

On Tuesday too, everyone else presented - so 40+ artists works to discover and enjoy :) but it all took 9 hours to finish :d ... MAN were we all tired by the end of it ...

Cookie, coloured

Phew, I just got a message from Angela saying that she's received her Christmas pressie in the mail in France where she is - so I can upload this painting now. I did it last week - it's a painted in version of this litho print. I actually found it quite difficult to get it in the style of Paul Colin (my pastiche artist of choice), and on closer investigation of the print and comparing it to his work, realised that my drawing was much too deliberate. It was my first time drawing on a litho plate so I didn't know how the materials would work.

Anyways, since I was not happy with the style of the image, I decided to not worry too much about getting the painting style too correct either. Instead I got it good enough to send it to its muse, Angela 'Cookie' Andrew; mentor and good friend.

I'm hoping to spend some time this weekend practicing drawing loosely, and more in the style of Paul Colin, and hopefully go into the lithography studios next week and get some more prints done before the Chrismas break.

Lithography introductory workshop

This week's workshops were in the lithography studious. The artist that I've chosen to do my pastiche on printed using lithography, so I've decided to do the same. What you see above is one of my final prints on off-white Somerset Satin paper. I hope to add a bit of colour to it eventually. This time too I remembered to take my camera along so you can see a bit more of the process.

Below is what my drawing looked like (you can see the original sketch here). I enlarged my original sketch using a photocopier, then dusted underneath with a red powder called "dragon's blood". Using it like a form of 'carbon paper', I transfered my sketch onto an aluminium plate. I then drew directly onto the plate using lithographic crayons, and special ink called "touche".

This morning we treated the plates with rosin (to preserve the fines lines), talc (to help the gum arabic to adhere to the plates) and gum arabic with phosphoric acid (which makes the non-drawn on bits of plate repel ink and attract water). After the gum dried, we washed all the crayon and ink off using something called "wash out". Below is my freshly washed plate.

Here's our plates on the old 1920's newspaper proof printing press.

We then learnt how to wet the plate and ink it up - see how its started to pick up ink on the dress where I had painted with "touche"?

The ink gets picked up on the 'blanket' on the roller of the press - it's basically a PVC-coated drum of fabric.

And then prints onto your paper which has been placed next to (not on top of) the plate. Below is my first print (proof). After several more applications of ink and printing, the dress ended up taking on much more ink and thats what you can see in the final print at the top pf this entry.

Next week, relief printing ...

Pastiche update

As I've mentioned before, one of our 15-week projects for this term is to do a pastiche of an artist of our choosing. I've now moved on from drawing dancing people to experimenting with painting those figures in the style of Paul Colin. We're going to start our print workshops in a couple of weeks and I'm hoping to work up one of my paintings into a proper lithographic print. Can't wait!

See here and here for examples of Paul Colin's work that I'm referencing.

Dancing delights

One of the major briefs for this term is to do a pastiche of an artist of our choice. I've decided to go with the French poster artist Paul Colin. His work is quite big within the swing dance community, with pretty much every woman dancer (including me!) having this famous poster of Josephine Baker on their wall. He did many a poster in his lifetime and even taught the art of poster design, but he is most well known for the Josephine Baker piece and his portfolio of "Le Tumulte Noir", inspired by Josephine and her fellow dancers. I've got hold of a copy of a modern reproduction of the portfolio and have been practicing drawing dancing figures in the style of Paul Colin. They're all based on photographs of me or my friends - I'm hoping to do a whole set of dancers that know and inspire me. Its been really nice to reconnect to my dancing after being away for so long ...