Sunday, January 3, 2016

Phase 9 - listening, listening, listening

New wing-fragment block, 12 x 24" on 3 pieces of 8.5 x 11 paper
A busy week in Artlandia! More cleaning, and wing-making! I was relieved to finish this 12 x 24" relief block of the primary feathers (to accompany the earlier blocks). 
earlier blocks :)
     
These are the largest feathers of the wing, and I printed them by hand onto 3 thin sheets of gray paper (when next I'm working on a press, I'll print the whole block on one marbled sheet), but, for now, I wanted to see what they'd look like (and also the multiple smaller sheets will be easier to scan.)                                  
   
One of the benefits of the long time spent carving, was that I realized halfway through that I think I can scan, shrink, and transfer them to polyester lithography plates. (So far I've been using the transfer processes to make things bigger, but I don't see any reason why it couldn't work going the opposite direction as well). Fingers crossed that it works so I can move on to carving the secondary feathers instead of doing another block of similarly shaped, smaller primaries.
It was challenging to stay focused and engaged with every mark (as we can see, the auto-focus on the camera seems to be a little overwhelmed/confused, haha). I think it was worth it though because I think these are going to be beauuutiful. There's just no way to fake that level of detail and individuation, and if the transfer works, then I just need to carve one more segment! Just one more!



As usual, my feline assistants were a big help ;).
My clever kitties - they know exactly the range of their human's arm + brush, and just
happen to sleep within reach, and I always love it when they demonstrate "repetition with variation" for me 


 Just touching paws - they look like a (fluffy) ying and yang symbol to me here.
I feel like this sometimes, like instead of walking around an obstacle, I climb the latter assuming its a wall.