something else 2D....

and back to art now. in addition to the frenzy of getting married, i am also taking 4 sessions of summer classes so i can graduate in december and become an art teacher! my first class from may was relief print. i was really excited about this. there are a few blogs i follow who are complete print nerds and i know what kind of close knit community it is. so im glad i'll be able to at least understand the lingo now. not completely proud of all of these, but i did learn things and thats whats important, right?

for this first one, it was based on Durer's work. we each  wrote a description of an animal and had to make a print from someone else's description. turns out, mine was a saber-tooth cat. but isn't he cute? this is my only print using colored inks.

for the next one, we recreated Goya prints. mine has the same composition as the original (Nothing could be done about it) but i changed the imagery subtly. the main figure is wearing a dress. the other figures around him are characters from the Catholic church. the message is about the Spanish Inquisition and the continued persecution of homosexuals. a little more heavy than just a cute kitten, but it's nice.

the next print was from a dream. this is a place i saw, high in the mountains and precariously held up by spindly sticks. every print has a different background. i used a chin-colle method with scrapbook paper for the patterns. wish the imagery was better, i do like the patterns. i think i'll use chin-colle with more pieces, more pieces i actually like.

the theme for this piece is Communication and the Art of Control. mine is about how the government works with the media to keep the people frightened and in control, more specifically, with health scares (bird flu, swine flu, e-coli). not that these aren't legitimate threats, but the government definitely uses that to their advantage. so mine has images from old Spanish doctors from the plague, with the bird masks. it also has some soldiers with gas masks. my favorite part is the community members. apparently, im good at illustrations, who knew? this one took forever because of all the detail, but i had so much fun carving out the tiny people.

the last project was a diptych. i could think of anything really, and we only had 2 days to cut and print an edition. so i went with a male and female skeleton gesturing towards each other on an abstract plane. nothing too deep and not that well executed, but there it is.

and now for some real art. in my current color theory class, we did a little mono-printing with wax paper. our teacher brought in some of her work for examples and i fell in love with it. any one of them would be perfect in my husband's future music studio (he wants a subtle orange, blue and earth tones color scheme). so i was able to trade 2 of my little works for this! it is a full sheet of Stonehenge paper, so it's pretty large. love it!