Golden Acrylics

I have liked every Golden product I've ever used and love, love, lover their Fluid Acrylics. I receive their Just Paint newsletter and their last issue had a great article on mixing colors--I wound up in the studio soon after reading to do some of my own mixing. The newsletter can be quite technical in nature, but I find that kind of stuff interesting. If you haven't heard of the newsletter before, it's work checking out!

Printing on MDF

Photoshop image of scanned flowers
(The image will be inverted when printed)

Relief on MDF
Students in my printmaking workshop drew images of flowers and after scanning them, I created a collage in Photoshop to laser cut into MDF. I treated the MDF before lasering with shellac (applied with a rag, let dry, lightly sanded with white 3M pad, reapplied shellac, resanded).

Digital techniques printmaking--here to stay
On the way to MAKEatx , our topic was Modern Printmaking Techniques Used Alone or when Combined with Traditional Printmaking--Are They Acceptable? Since they have been raised in high tech, I really wanted to get their opinions. When someone creates an image exclusively in Photoshop and calls it a Digital Woodcut, then prints it on a high-end laser printer, should it be called a woodcut? Here we were going to a laser cutting machine to digitally engrave a piece of wood. The consensus? Digital is here to stay. Artwork needs to be properly noted with technique. I also encouraged them to question artists and gallery owners how art works are created and printed, e.g. "art print" can actually mean "reproduction" and not "hand-pulled print"--not everyone is on the same page on full disclosure.

Here's an up close of our laser cut MDF. We print next week!

Printmaking Lesson Plans

Relief print--background made with skinny roulette

I've had a great time at Griffin School, where I'm teaching an 8-session printmaking course. Last week covered intaglio and it was great to hear the oohs and ahhs as the kids pulled their pieces off the press. If you're about to teach a printmaking workshop, I'm happy to share my lesson plans--just get back to me with any improvements. They're skeletons, but you'd at least get the intentions and supply list off of them which may be of help if you're creating yours from scratch. This is what we've covered so far: monotype on gelatin plates, monotype on plexi plates, relief, and intaglio. Next up we're going on a field trip to laser cut a collaborative piece in wood at MAKEatx, then after that, we'll tackle collagraphs. At the end of the 8 weeks we'll have covered a little of everything. The one area that needs tweaking? Kids come into class without any ideas on what to create, therefore spending valuable press time running to the library for images. I'm not sure how to solve this. I may start clipping images out of magazines to provide a stack of inspiration.

The Grackle Oven

I finished 6 grackles! I had the birds in the back of my car for several days in this self-made Grackle Oven so that the Akua ink would really, really dry. I love Akua, but the slow drying time can be a blessing (when art making) and a curse (when finishing--framing, storing, mounting, etc.). This is where the Texas sun comes in. I already trimmed the grackles with scissors (BTW I used Mars Black, which is their quickest drying black, on rice paper) with minimal ink transfer to my fingertips, but wanted to make sure they were totally nuked so I put them in this folder between 2 pieces of mat board--just to keep them from being damaged by my normal practice of hauling bikes.

© 2012 Cathy Savage, Grackles 3-8

Result? Dry, dry, dry after about 5 days! And that includes 2 overcast days and being covered for a day with Goodwill donations.

Fish prints--as in inking and printing the real fish!

© 1990 Deborah McLouth, Largemouth Bass, 9.5 x 22"

I remember when I first heard of Gyotaku and thought it was the coolest thing ever. Wikipedia says Gyotaku (Japanese, from gyo "fish" + taku "rubbing") is a traditional form of Japanese fish printing or rubbing, dating from the mid-19th century, a form of nature printing used by fishermen to record their catches. In order to make a gyotaku print, one places the subject (e.g. fish, crab, scallop shell) on a wooden bench and paints one side with sumi ink. Next a piece of paper or other material is laid over the ink-covered fish. Finally, one rubs the material until there is the image of the fish on it.

My friend Deborah McLouth of Rippling Waters Studio creates the most remarkable fish prints. She's set up a trial run for her booth display (she's about to participate as a vendor in Babes on the Bay, a fishing tournament in Rockport, TX) and I went to check it out last weekend and bought the beauty above. It came with a copy of January 1990's Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine, where Deborah was featured in a 5-page article demonstrating her techniques. Deborah is a member of Nature Printing Society, and I bought their book last year and recommend it. If your a printmaking book junkie, you need to add The Art of Printing from Nature to your collection. I have blogged about Deborah before after a studio visit and it included more pics. You can read that post here.

Deborah has led hands-on fish printing before and kids really love it. If you're looking for a printmaking project for young and old alike, this will work. There are molds out there of fish and other underwater creatures. Here's a link to molds available from Dick Blick. 

Artist Date: Making earrings with lasers!

The blue earrings are my friend Beth's design--
she made me a pair at the same time she was cut her own

My girlfriend and I took some time out on Sunday to attend MAKEatx's jewelry workshop and we had a fun 3-hours. We had such a great time! If you have a chance to attend one of MAKEatx's workshops, do it. It was a blast, and now we're wearing stylish stuff.









I am working on a screen print of Hermione for our elementary school's art show and it's coming along. I went online and found a lego pic of Hermione, copied it, increased the contrast, printed it out and then took a Sharpie to it. I have some touch ups to do, but I'm closing in on it. Next I'll be painting my screen with screen filler. We'll screen shirts that people bring to the art show for a $3 donation, so we're technically not selling a copy written image. (Yes, that's a wand! Doesn't it look like a walking stick?)

So. Tax time. I'm happy to say it's over. My husband does 90% of them, but it's tense around here at the final push. Hopefully I'll get some other great posts up soon. I went to a friend's home art show and sale over the weekend--fabulous--and then met a cool artist that I want to be sure to tell you about...

Attempting to Reduce Production Time

I'm now printing 5 grackles at a time

Revelation: Work Smarter!
In order to make a living doing my art, I need to decrease my production time or use cheaper materials. Well, I don't like the cheaper materials idea, so I'm tackling production time. Working more efficiently on my sell able items will allow me to work on other projects--products that I'm excited about working on but have pushed back due to lack of time (these projects also have the potential to sell at a higher price point). In this vein, I carved 10 birds for my grackle collages on the same piece of wood--5 on one side, 5 on the other--allowing me to print several at a time.

Collaged boards waiting for grackles

A couple of weeks ago I printed background papers and glued them to my wood frames, making an assembly line of sorts. I'll add a grackle on them once dry and touch up where needed. I've also been recording every second spent on each step in the process. When this next batch of grackle collages are finished, I want to accurately know how much time I spent working on them. Knowing how much time each takes + the cost of supplies, will be valuable when setting the price. Market value is key here, but I at least need to be going into it with my eyes wide open.   

Revelation: Keep it Simple, Stupid! 
I reduced time and effort by minimizing the amount of colors workshop participants could use. So easy to do and I don't think it diminished their experience (we were just proofing after all).

OK, I realize these simplifications aren't rocket science, but every little tip helps. If you have any of your own, I'd love to hear them!

Sintra -- the Wonder Substrate

© Cathy Savage, Bird on a Ball, 22 x 30",
drypoint and embossing on Sintra
with collage and chine colle

I've been using Sintra (Cel tec/plastic coated foam core/name of the week) as a printing plate and this is what I've learned:

• It can be cut to size with a chop saw or table saw--or the old fashioned way with a utility knife and a ruler.
• It can be carved with a dremel tool, hand tools, scribe or something as simple as sandpaper.
• It can be coated with Pledge (formerly Future) Floor Wax to minimize the orange peel surface (handy for intaglio when wanting to reduce plate tone, plus making a smoother surface seems to make the tools glide easier).
• You don't have to bevel the plate when printing relief if using chip board or Naugahyde instead of blankets. (The pressure used is much lighter than intaglio where you'll need to bevel to keep paper and blankets from cutting.)
• It's cheap. An 1/8" width 4 x 8' sheet of it costs $22 from Regal Plastics. They will cut it for you into pieces for a few dollars. 
• You can emboss it, make a collagraph, carve into it, sand it, and print it relief or intaglio. 
• You can use the other side! It comes coated in plastic so be sure to peel off before you begin. (I leave the plastic on the back until I'm ready to go on the flip side.) 

This material can't be lasered because the fumes would be toxic, but it is otherwise the most versatile and inexpensive matrix I've ever used. (Mat board is pretty awesome too. I'll need to do a post about mat board at some point...)

Workshop: Laser cutting for Printing

result from laser etched chipboard printed intaglio

Laser woodcut matrix with some additional hand carving

I'm excited to announce that WPA and MAKEatx are teaming up to hold a laser/print combo workshop! I'll be helping out by offering my experience with printing lasered substrates, while MAKEatx will provide expertise in setting up files and the actual lasering. It'll be a 2-day workshop of 3-hours each and there will be laser time + the WPA studio will be open for proofing. We'll experiment with chip board, wood, and acrylic. The plate size will be kept to 5 x 7" so we can accommodate everyone (think of a dot-matrix printer--that's how the machine functions so it's not necessarily lightening speed). Interested? The dates will be May 22 and 25 from 6:30-9:30 PM. We're still working on the price but our goal is to get your interest piqued in experimenting with this new technology, so it'll be affordable. More info coming on how to register, but if you have any questions in the meantime, please let me know!

© 2012 Cathy Savage, Kepler/Brahe, 15 x 11.75"

Here's my first woodcut on the laser machine. As noted in the caption above, I needed to do some hand carving in the areas that I wanted to be clear of incidental marks. The laser was great in getting my key imagery transferred to the wood. Since it was a digital file I could increase and decrease everything until it was just right, then go in with the hand tools.

More laser posts found using this link. 

It was a Tesla kinda day

©2011 Cathy Savage,
Tesla the Visual Thinker, Linocut, 4 x 6"

I made some more Tesla postcard prints over the weekend since I had a couple of sales on Etsy the other day. I am loving my sign press! I can't get over the convenience of printing in my own home vs traveling to a studio.

I also posted some of my Tesla finger puppets on Etsy. I have consistently showed up for my allotted 4-hours/week as a member at MAKEatx, so some of that time has been playing around such as making puppets, so now I need to move them off my desk.














It may seem like I've been super productive, but I am feeling really scattered. I'm doing this crafty stuff (fun), teaching workshops (fun), and making the mini-grackles (also fun), but I'm taking time away from what I envision for my art. I just need to work it out in my noggin how I'm going to do these fun things that do generate a little bit of income, and how I'm going to do the stuff that is my true motivator--my other art projects. These things have been great but they've kept me away from focusing on my quest. If I manage to keep my work my main focus, and if I could see a line on how these fun things help spread the word of my other work, it might be worth it, but that's difficult to gauge. I'm sure I'll work it out eventually...

Sintra, Cel Cut, PVC Coated Foam Core

© Cathy Savage, Country Roads, 11 x 15",
mostly drypoint, some collagraph

© Cathy Savage, Cowbird vs. Blue Jay, 11 x 15,
drypoint, collagraph

Whatever you're calling this product (Sintra and Cel Cut are brand names), it's pretty versatile for printmaking. I've used it exclusively for drypoint and collagraph plates, but I'm going to be trying it out as relief this week in the high school workshop I'm teaching. I figured it would be a great material to try drypoint and print as relief, then wipe as intaglio and print it an entirely different way with a completely different look. (Plus there will be way less blood than a regular relief class using traditional carving tools.)

If you've tried Sintra for printmaking, I'd love to hear about how you've used it and if you have any tricks I need to know for relief.

PS We've had guests in town for the month of March, so I've been a bit sluggish with doing art and posting about it. But I'm back, baby!

Drypoint Tools

My favorite dypoint tools

I have 5 essential drypoint tools. (As I was frantically searching for my carbide scribe this morning, I noticed this box of tools which was created during an attempt to get organized. Aha! I should leave a note in the old places to remind me to look for the box!) Here they are: burnisher, wire brush, carbide scribe, roulette, mini roulette. I have sandpaper in my box too, which you can kinda see peeking out. Scraper tool also handy, though I keep that in another location since I use it for all kinds of stuff, most commonly for beveling edges on plates.

Cranking out Itty Bitties

I have 6 new 8 x 8" grackles boards in production. Yesterday I pulled out a stack of prints and had fun assembling the backgrounds. Grackles arriving later this week. I'm using a new substrate by Ampersand that I'm liking--a local company. It's a new product line of natural wood panels cradled at different heights (the ones I bought are 7/8" inch). They look super sturdy for encaustic, so a product to keep in mind if I get back into using wax.

I also got a chance to meet on of my food heros! I went to a veggie fest over the weekend and met cookbook author Isa Chandra Moskowitz. She was signing books and so I picked up this new one. I own Vegan with a Vengence, Vegan Brunch, and Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World, so you could say I'm a fan. Her writing style is so funny, so right now this new cookbook can be found on my bedside table vs. my kitchen. I'm looking forward to trying some new recipes!

Hessian Soldier by artist Howard Rains

© 2000 Cathy Savage, Blue David
© 2012 Howard Rains, Hessian Soldier

I bought the gem on the right at Blue Genie, which is an arts fair held around the holidays in these parts. (The Blue David on the left is one I did years ago during a blue-face phase--Blue Elvis can be found here.) I've been meaning to show off the Hessian on the blog for ages, but haven't gotten around to it until now.

© 2011 Howard Rains, Hessian Soldier,13.5 x 7 x 1.5"

The artist is Howard Rains and he sells them on Etsy, so you can get your own should you be so inclined. What's a Hessian? Click here and you can go to Wikipedia.

I was fortunate enough to visit Howard Finster back when he was alive. Howard Rains' work reminds me of the other Howard's cutouts. Clever!!