Right, so this is my first proper WIP post since…then beginning of summer? What a shame.

I’m working on this painting that was the subject of my first one-a-day post (I took a picture of it on July 3rd, but I really began painting on June 16th, right after Momentum with a large bottle of rum right beside me). It’s looking more like this right now. I like it a lot better in its current state than I did when I began it. The alcohol probably made me do all of the crazy shit. Or I’m just making excuses for my poor judgement in trying new things. Either way, it’s a big closer to what I’m accustomed to, but I’m leaning more towards atmospheric paintings. Too safe? (There are other ideas brewing in my head right now, but they’re being saved for a different medium) I’m reintroducing the text and I’m probably going to continue with it for a few other paintings. Throughout high school, Mr. Shen was always very skeptical about my use of text, but I stand by my decision of making it illegible. A glimpse into what’s really happening but without exposing too much. At least that’s how I look at it.

The first photo of my One-A-Days. Posting one photo a day. For the rest of the summer? For the rest of forever?

I’ve left this painting stagnent for a while now. At a loss of what to do with it. I’m pretty unhappy with it right now, so I guess I’ll probably cover a large portion of it in white and start over. Kind of Twombly-esque and I like it.

The red print. Which isn’t really that red anymore. But I plan on staying in that color family for this print anyways. Today I added the second part of the “mountains” and the ground plane.

A detail of the red print. The lighter color is actually a layer of screenprinting for another print. I decided to cut back on the “edition” size, so all of the extras just went towards another print. It looks pretty interesting with the paint over it.

This has nothing to do with schoolwork whatsoever. I forget how much I enjoy painting when I haven’t done it in so long. It feels good. Very direct. I’m pretty much done with these, I’m going to put a clear varnish over them. Shiny.

And some photos I uploaded on flickr of the Dolphin building:

A view of the letterpress room and the many cases of type.

The big Vandercook press

Screenprinting exposure table (sorry ’bout the blur). All those lightbulbs…

Surprise surprise, I’m going to do the dishes because I’ve been in my room for way too long.

I work in a very confined space, here in my apartment. But I still feel the most comfortable here. Working in the Dolphing building is uncomfortable at best – too many people, not enough privacy.

Anyways, what I’ve been doing today is painting over the prints that I made. I have two layers screenprinted – the first is a very translucent green halftone. The halftone is really large, the largest dot is probably a quarter inch in size (probably won’t do that again…), so I didn’t want it to take over the image. The second layer is the background to the mountaneous forms that I’m used to doing in paintings. Basically a flat shape of color. Made that one too faint, so it didn’t cover enough of the halftone layer or the monotype background that Nick suggested I do. I was pretty unhappy with these two layers while I was still at Dolphin, and ended up just stopping at that. I’m glad I did because I came home and proceeded to cover them with washes of gesso. I love gesso. So much more than just white acrylic. The texture is really nice and it gets really satiny when you sand it. I’m already excited about these prints again.

This is one of my favorites from what I did today. I’ll try to get some better pictures tomorrow when the light is better and I’ll do a bigger picture post tomorrow. But about the print, I think the green halftone layer sits really nicely on the monotype background. This one is a lot more subtle than the others, I suppose and that’s why I like it. I like it when you can get really close to work and find nice surprises in the details. I’m going to wait a little bit longer and sand down the gesso so I have a nice surface to screenprint on. The next layer for this print will either be a hand drawn layer on textured film (it’ll have the texture of a drawing) or a really fine halftone of a watercolor painting I did. The smoothness of the gesso will be pretty important in regards to the detail that I get.

I really enjoy making halftones of watercolor paintings. There’s so much detail! And it’s such a good way to add value to a screenprint.

In addition to reworking the prints that I’ve already done, I worked on some more backgrounds for other prints. I think I prefer painting directly on the paper as opposed to the monotypes. It’s very tedious to do the monotypes and then it’s too…bold and graphic for a background image. Maybe I’m just not as good at it and that’s why they’re terrible. Well, not entirely. But anyway, better results from the paint.