Category: <span>Art</span>

Category: Art

Art

Open Print Exchange #3

 , ,


We’re into the third round of the Open Print Exchange which is now being held annually.  To see more about the previous print exchanges I’ve participated in, check out this tag – Open Press Project.  This year, I had started on something different and became increasingly frustrated with my 40-something-year-old eyes and the need for reading glasses and was just in a creative rut, so I scrapped the first print and went on to something I know and love – cameras.  I picked up the little Brownie Starmite II at a barn sale a few years ago, and was delighted to find exposed film still inside the camera.  I sent it off for processing, and you can see the results here.


I took some creative liberty with the body color of the camera, and I have an idea to print this again with a few different body colors just for fun.  The paper is handmade paper from recycled political ads from the 2022 election season.  We, as a household of two voters, received over 3 lbs of paper mailers which is incredibly wasteful and has a limited (if any) impact on a growing population that doesn’t use postal mail except for packages.  I find it pretty tone deaf for candidates who tout their platform as being pro-environmental protections, yet continue to engage is such incredible wastefulness.  And there’s no way to opt out either (I tried, honest).  So, instead of adding more stress and wastefulness to our recycling/trash stream, I decided to try to recycle it all by hand and turn the hateful mailers into something beautiful.  Anyway, the print is done with Cranfield inks, and the blocks in the image at the top are two lino blocks.  The paper is 7 cm square (roughly 2.75 inches).  I do enjoy working at this small scale since it’s a challenge and actually kind of fun, but my eyes were just giving me SO much trouble this year, and I’m maybe mourning the loss of my youth to a certain degree too.  I know this is inevitable, and it’s a part of aging, but I’m finding the changes in my vision harder to accept than the wrinkles and achy joints.  Anyway, I’m still happy with how this came out, and it’s a fun project to keep me in practice every year!

Art

Holiday Card 2023

 , ,

This was the annual holiday card for 2023, and hopefully everyone has received theirs by now!  Lots of lessons learned on this one, and the screen and ink just didn’t cooperate with me, so this was frustrating, but the results are pretty great and hopefully don’t show how I very nearly scrapped this and didn’t even do a card this year.  There were four screen printing passes on this card – two for the front, one for the message inside, and one for the information on the back.  My husband had spent two years in Portsmouth, UK as an exchange officer with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, and I got to visit a few times and see exactly this gorgeous view out of his apartment window.  The structure on the right is the Spinnaker Tower (wikipedia link) and the colorful sky in the background is the sunset that can be seen when it’s not raining (England, you know..).  I found out after printing that square cards require extra postage since the machines can’t tell which way is up – rectangles sort perfectly in their machines but squares get bumped out for hand stamping, so it was an extra 20 cents of postage.  Lesson learned folks, don’t send square cards.  The back is printed with a little info about the tower and husband’s work overseas, and my name and the date.  These went out REALLY late, so I put a more New Year’s style greeting inside.  I may play with this design later and do a linocut since I do love how it came out and I think it might lend itself better to a linocut, honestly!

Art

Open Print Exchange 2 – Prints Received

 ,

Updating this post to show my prints received!  These came a few months ago, but let’s be honest, the holidays are hectic enough, and it just didn’t make it to the blog till now.  The next exchange is already kicking off, so it’s good to have these posted.  There’s a really great variety of prints here with different printmaking methods and a range of styles.  Really love these!

The prints, top row, left to right:
“Blue Hour” by Villia Maria Jefremovas – Open Print Exchange Link
“Happy Robots Family” by Annika – Open Print Exchange Link
“Untitled” by Heather Hartz – Open Print Exchange Link

Middle Row, left to right:
“Zigzag” by Maja Denzer – Open Print Exchange Link
“I love snails” by Dana Bjorum – Open Print Exchange Link
“One owl” by Jessamy Harvey – Open Print Exchange Link

Bottom Row, left to right:
“Quiet day in the harbour” by Lino Lord – Open Print Exchange Link
“Entangled Geometry” by Louise Ockenden – Open Print Exchange Link
“Untitled” by Kate Jenkins – Open Print Exchange Link

Art

Open Print Exchange – Take 2

 , , , ,

I had SO much fun with the original Open Press Project Print Exchange that when they opened it up for round 2, I immediately jumped on board.  The idea is you send in ten prints made with an Open Press Project mini printing press – one stays with the project and gets sent out on exhibitions, and you receive nine random prints in return.

Inspired by this past year’s holiday card, I did another drypoint etching on a plastic plate.  Go with what you know, right?  The deadline to be received in Germany was February 1, so I had them out mid January which was a bit of a list minute rush after a busy holiday season, and partly why I went a little easier on myself with this one instead of trying something new.  Still, I’m REALLY happy with how it came out and can’t wait to see the nine prints I receive in return!  To see all the prints from both exchanges, check out their openprintexchange.com website.

Print Details:
Backer #536
Drypoint Etching on plastic plate
Speedball Akua Ink in Mars Black
Printed on Legion Stonehenge paper in Steel Grey

Update 1/24/2024 – Exchange prints have been received and that post is at the following link – https://www.sheetar.com/2024/01/24/open-print-exchange-2-prints-received/

Art

Open Print Exchange – Prints Received

 ,

I said I would update this post once I received the prints for the exchange, and here I am, better late than never!  I believe this arrived at some point in May of 2022, but of course, beekeeping season is really ramping up at that point and posting about it just didn’t happen until now which is my low point before the season kicks off.  Anyway, these are the 9 prints I received in the print exchange – all of these are 7cm square and are all pretty different in terms of technique, subject, paper, color, etc.  It’s so interesting to see how many different things you can do with one tiny little press!  Click the Open Print Exchange Link to see more detail about each print.

The prints, top row, left to right:
“Untitled” by Yoko Sugeno – Open Print Exchange Link
“lulu the wonderdog” by janine howe – Open Print Exchange Link
“Bunundrum” by Miles Elliott – Open Print Exchange Link

Middle row, left to right
“Ottocat” by Olena Ingerova – Open Print Exchange Link
“Shorebirds” by Kristin Bickal – Open Print Exchange Link
“Precious” by Sara Hindhaugh – Open Print Exchange Link

Bottom row, left to right
“Blue Banded Bee” by Heather Davidson – Open Print Exchange Link
“Still Counting” by Michael Laungjessadakun – Open Print Exchange Link
“Saturnus” by Adelaide Hunter – Open Print Exchange Link

Art

Holiday Card 2022

 , ,

This is the annual holiday card for December 2022, now that everyone has received theirs!  Every year, I put together a non-holiday-specific art card that works both as a greeting card to send holiday wishes to friends and family, and it functions as a way to flex some creative muscles and put together a little piece of functional art.  This year was a screen printed card with four color layers (yellow, green, gold, black) and an additional credit line on the back and a greeting line inside for a total of six passes of printing.  I was SUPER happy with how this came together and will likely use variations of this for the honey business this year.  For registration and to get the layers all lined up, I had printed out the design on cardstock and attached long tabs to the registration guide to line up each layer – you can see the little registration marks on the corners of the green screen below the card.  I also added 3 layers of painters tape in the corner of the registration guide to act as a sort of backstop to set each card every time so they’d all end up in the same place.  Is this the easiest way to do this?  Absolutely not.  Did it work pretty well and was cheaper than shelling out for registration pins and tabs?  DEFINITELY.  Was it perfect?  Not quite.  Anyway, so using that method, I first laid down the gold, then the yellow, then the green, and finally the black, leaving each layer to dry a couple of hours in between.  Wintertime low humidity meant it went pretty quick and I had the whole set of 43 (plus 12 test prints on cardstock) completed in two days.  I printed them on a bunch of blank cards I had picked up when AC Moore closed a few years ago, so I had a stash of kraft brown and plain white at my disposal. Not sure which I like best, to be honest!  The paper didn’t mesh super well with the ink and there’s some weird bleeding that didn’t happen on the plain cardstock tests, but I think the white paper has some shiny coating on it that makes it a little fussy.  In the end, I was REALLY pleased with the design and how they came out, and I hope the recipients enjoyed them as well!

Art

Open Print Exchange

 , , , , , ,

A few years ago, I started taking printmaking classes with a local artist at our community art center to give me something to do and dig back into a creative groove.  Printmaking was something I’d always wanted to try and this class gave us a great overview of the basics of a few different printmaking methods.  I later took more classes with the same teacher and really found a love for all the possibilities in printmaking.  There’s also something neat about the history of the craft.  Anyway, making prints without a press can be a bit limiting since some of the methods involve consistent pressure that can’t really be achieved by hand, so when I saw the Open Press Project on Kickstarter, I jumped on it.  My little blue press arrived and I went to town playing with drypoint etching on plastic plates.  It’s a very small format since the bed is only about 3×5.5 inches in size, but that also makes it portable and takes up less space which isn’t a bad thing.

At the end of 2021, the team that created the little press put out a call for artists to join a global art swap using the press to create a small series of 10 prints.  For mine, I used a subject that’s gone around a few times in various printmaking iterations from a screen print to a stencil, solar print, and probably eventually a linocut.  It’s my grandpa’s old Polaroid SX-70, and my love of photography bleeding into my newfound love of printmaking is something that should shock absolutely no one!

Here’s my whole series of ten – one will stay with the Open Press Project folks and be part of a catalog and future show, and in return, I’ll receive 9 different prints from artists around the world.  Can’t wait to see the catalog and online archive with all the prints as well, and I’ll add a new post once I’ve received my 9 prints in the mail, hopefully this summer.

Print Details:
Backer #53
Drypoint Etching on plastic plate
Speedball Akua Ink in Mars Black
Printed on Legion Stonehenge paper in Steel Grey

UPDATE: March 2023 – Prints were received in May 2022 and I finally posted about them!  Here’s the link – https://www.sheetar.com/2023/03/29/open-print-exchange-prints-received/

Art

Holiday Card 2021

 , ,

Now that they’ve all arrived at their destinations, I can finally show off the holiday art card I made for 2021!  I’m not too big on the winter holiday season – I’m not religious, I don’t really celebrate any sort of traditional Christmas or religious holiday, and have found it hard to find happiness during this time of year – I’m pretty deeply introverted, so large parties are not my thing, and feeling guilty for not being happy during that time of year is difficult to deal with when everyone has these high expectations and standards of how/when/where/why you should be happy and celebratory.  For the past I think 4 years now, I’ve gotten into the habit of making a not-holiday-specific art card instead of buying pre-made cards as a way of giving myself a creative challenge and finding my own way to something happy without following a cookie-cutter mold of how things should be.  It also fits in with my idea that the winter holiday season should be more about the people and the gathering rather than the stuff and the things, so creating something with my own two hands feels more meaningful and less wasteful than buying stuff that might end up being returned, sold, traded, re-gifted, etc.  Being together in person with the pandemic and all has been difficult, so this sort of fills in that gap a little too by having something handmade to send to family and friends.

On to the card!  After last year’s complicated 3 layer screen print, I went a little simpler this year with a two piece linocut of the canal houses in Amsterdam.  I sort of took ideas from houses I’d photographed while traveling and various photos around the internet and mashed them together into this.  Then, once I saw the empty space above just the houses, I took the scrap cut from the houses and made a little windy sky to fill that space.  I used a batch of cards I picked up in bulk when AC Moore closed (I’ll be using those for years to come) and printed with black Speedball Fabric Ink in black as well as a standard Speedball Block Printing Ink (water based) in a light blue color.  The block itself isn’t even real linoleum, it’s a rubber “Soft-Kut” printmakers block that I get in 12×12″ pieces and then cut down to fit each project.  The rubber is like sneaker sole material and is easier to carve and definitely a lot less hard on the carving tools, though it can be a bit less exact, especially on corners and edges since it smooshes and squishes with the tools.  Proper lino is a nice, hard surface and definitely gives me better lines, but it’s more difficult to cut and work with and can sometimes crumble.  As for the ink, I like working with the oil-based fabric ink much better, but didn’t happen to have the blue color on hand in the same ink, so I used the classic water-soluble ink for the sky bits.  The water-soluble ink tends to leave a texture behind, but dries immediately while the oil-based ink prints cleaner and flatter, but takes a few days to dry completely.

Overall, I really liked this year’s card!  I did put together a screen for the inside message, “From our home to yours,” and the back of the card for the date and credit lines, so it’s all hand printed between the linocut and the screen print, no printer printing.  Now I’ve got to start thinking about next year’s card at some point!