[Baren]: The mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking. Baren Digest Tuesday, 21 July 1998 Volume 04 : Number 220 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Bull Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 00:07:31 +0900 Subject: [Baren 1208] Re: gallery ... Re the [Baren] gallery ... Thanks for the feedback on that sample page. If at first you don't succeed ... http://www.woodblock.com/forum/who.html ... try again! Remember, I will not be putting people in there without their permission. Please check this new version out, and then let me know if you want in. I'll need to know which three prints you want to use, and I'll also need your mug shot. I sure hope everybody will participate. This will become a very interesting page I think. *** Graham wrote: > I have posted a new image Graham, you made me nervous the other day with your mention of taking up lithography. I thought that maybe you were getting 'bored' with woodblock work! But I'm happy to see that you haven't abandonded your baren ... and that you are still with us ... Dave ------------------------------ From: Graham Scholes Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 08:42:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Baren 1209] Re: How to print with acrylic . Hideshi wrote.. > I'll explane how to print with " Liquitex " . >It is very simple , when I use Liquitex I add " Gradation medium " to it . >This medium makes Liquiyex dry slowly . >After that I print with it exactly the same as ordinary way , spreading it >with a brush >and print with a baren . That's all !! Interesting ... it certainly gives you rich colours and add a new dimension to printmaking. How do you cope with the ink setting or crusting over when on the paper. I would think there are real problems when you want to print another colour ? Graham ------------------------------ From: Gayle Wohlken Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 16:17:04 -0400 Subject: [Baren 1210] Re: Baren Digest V4 #219 Baren, Though Matt, James, and Dave know, most of you don't know that I have just lost my best friend. Alois died on July 11. We were high school friends; not great friends then, (that came later) but I respected him for his talents with drawing and writing. He sat behind me in 10th grade English class and wrote notes filled with playful fun and little cartoons with charming gesture. We both got C that semester, though we were capable of A. I considered him my gift then for I was returning to school from an illness that had kept me home for six months. He didn't know my fears of starting over, I didn't tell him that, but I never for got how grateful I was for that one boy, that one semester. Years and years later I found him, through poetry, and discovered a sick and dying man. This was the person I believed would have taken the world by it's tail and spun it a bit. What a writer he had become! Yet his illness was profound. He was living in a dangerous part of the city in a house with no heat, no water, no electricity. My heart was broken for him and there was nothing to do but everything. In the end he called me his hero. What a wonderful thing to be. Someone's hero. He was mine, too. Please look at him again. http://www.woodblock.com/encyclopedia/entries/008_11/images/gayle_alois.jpg Gayle Wohlken ------------------------------ From: Gary Luedtke Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 17:23:16 -0400 Subject: [Baren 1211] Re: Baren Digest V4 #219 Sorry to hear of your tragic loss, Gayle. To find such a good friend is a rare thing. Gary ------------------------------ From: Graham Scholes Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 15:40:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Baren 1212] Re: gallery ... Dave wrote.... >Graham, you made me nervous the other day with your mention of taking up >lithography. I thought that maybe you were getting 'bored' with >woodblock work! O heavens no. I have been working in transparent waterbase inks for 45 years. I don't know any better and only want to bring them together in a print. I have plans of doing the same with Dry Point. I have just shot a hole in the theory ...You can't teach old dogs new tricks. Graham ------------------------------ From: Jean Eger Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 23:29:50 -0700 Subject: [Baren 1213] Re: Baren Digest V4 #219 Hi Graham and all, It's great to hear from you again. I quite agree that there is no substitute for drawing ability. On the other hand, printmakers are attracted to technology more so than most artists (except for sculptors, perhaps), so it is natural for them to use the computer in their art. The computer is used extensively in design or commercial art as we used to call it. That doesn't mean it's no good for fine art. I tried using computer technology with several printmaking media. I did have my best luck with doing color separations for woodcut designs. They had a rather primitive quality, but the images were recognizable. It really wasn't a time-saver, but an avenue to an interesting aesthetic effect. But I drifted away from using that technology after awhile. I tried to upload a couple of woodcut images to my web site, but of course my scanner can't find its driver just now, so I'll do it later. These are are woodcuts created from my photos by using a posterization filter in Photoshop, then a color separation, then pasting the printout on to wood, and then cutting them. The inks were oil-based. They probably would have been better prints if I had hand-drawn them, of if I'd printed out on thinner paper. You can do this with a desk-jet if you tape the paper to the regular printer paper. I was first attracted to using a computer in my art when viewing a printmaking show in Santa Fe, New Mexico around 1992. I luckily happened to wander into the museum when (former Tamarind director) Clinton Adams was giving a tour. He was quite wide-eyed about one print which incorporated computer technology. The print was called, "Task Mask," by Thomas Barrow. It was a color planograph done in 1989. This print is reproduced in a beautiful book, "PRINTMAKING IN NEW MEXICO, 1880-1990," by Clinton Adams, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1991. (167 pages, amply illustrated with 17 color plates and many b&w plates.) A Gustave Baumann woodcut is on the cover. The print (reproduced in the book) is a picture of a mask. The mask is shaped like the upper half of a skull, but it is round, as if it was done in a 3-D rendering program. Hanging from the bottom of the mask are digital-looking feathers in six colors. At the top of the mask are more digital shreds of feather-signifiers. A person's eyes and nose peer out through the eyes of the mask. That was the first time I became aware of printmaking using computer technology. It was an exciting print. The young people are doing amazing things with the computer graphics. It is an exciting time because we can get a close-up view of technology taking off. The best thing about using the computer technology with the woodcut was that it was fun. I think Graham would agree with that. Sincerely, Jean Eger ------------------------------ End of Baren Digest V4 #220 ***************************