Textural for tonal

New Work

These are just a few experimentations I started recently.  They are continuations from the work I did last year with replicating photographs onto metal plates.  Previously I was priming the plates then working on top of them with charcoal and other dry media.  During that year I was interested in working with the plate more, especially since they were mostly off-cuts from zinc etching plates and I knew that I could be altering the surface more.  But I just didn't have the time.

After recharging for a few months this year I've started with these new works.  I might build them into a proper project but at the moment I'm simply still exploring what can be done with the medium.  I'm still at a learning process with transforming tonal qualities into textural qualities, and how that relates to reading the image as a positive or negative image.  But I'm really enjoying the tactile quality of these works, and how touching diminishes the need for visual legibility.  They're quite strange little artifacts and I think they read more directly with tin types, negative glass plates or other forms of photography, which is nice.

Most of the new works are just an open bite with acid, which has me blocking out parts of the metal I don't want eaten away with acid resistant bitumen.  (The last image still has bitumen on it!)  With the possibility of progressing towards more forms of intalgio as the experiments go on.

Tim Olsen Drawing Prize

I'm one of the thirteen nominated participants in this year's Tim Olsen Drawing Prize.  I've been wanting to be in this show for roughly three years now, so please come and support me tommorow night: Tuesday the 13th of September. 

Sneak Peak

This is a little sneak peak from a new print that was very popular at the Spring Fair this year. It's an etching that is in it's second stage and hopefully I will be able to push it into a third stage soon. I've been working on it since February and I'm planning more images to build a series of work.

Solo Show!

I'm having an exhibition from the 9th to the 21rst of October at galleryeight!
This is my first solo and I am very excited and nervous
so please join me for drinks on Opening night:

the 9th of October,
from 6-9pm
at galleryeight
8 Argyle Place

galleryeight is open Thursdays to Sundays 12-6pm
but you might get lucky on some of the other days.

This show will be a collection of my charcoal works,
for more hints head over to my website,
but come meet them and me in person,
we're much more interesting in the 3D world.

Process pictures

More process images!

I am trying to simultaneously experiment and build a new body of work with my charcoal portraits.  This is the most recent and I have to say my easy favourite.  He's gotten straight onto my website and I also entered him into Blanket Magazine's Portrait challenge.  (They are amazing go take a look) I heard of the challenge before making him and I wanted to do more charcoal works so I decided to do some double duty.  Hopefully he'll get accepted.  

He is also working for me in my attempt in gaining a student grant, and will probably be pushed into the Mosman or the Waverly Art Prize in the near-distant future. 

A very busy picture.   

Quite a few people ask me: how do you get it to look like water is dripping down it?

Answer: I drip water on it.

I hope that didn't spoil the image for anyone, some people like to not know how something is made, ruins the magic.

I feel the same about most technological and scientific events, inventions or general know-how.  If you ask me how the internet works I can safely tell you: by magic.  And that is all I have to know.  Frankly I feel like knowing too much background info sometimes kills of the mystique of life.  Apart from quantum physics, evolution and the big bang. That shit is awesome.

But I love knowing how people make images, hence the process pictures.  And I get all miffed when artists try to hide how they made something so someone can't copy them.  I swear I just want to know how they make it!  I'm not going to copy! (maybe a little bit...stingy artists...)  

But Folks get ready to try this at home,

if you draw on canvas you can use the special charcoal eraser,

but you can also you water!  

I use water and a sponge.

If I need to clean up a lot of charcoal I use a scouring sponge.

That's just cleaning up though, 

you can also use water as a mark making device.

Throwing water, swirling it around, etc.

The water picks up the charcoal, 

and dry pigment + water = "paint"

so there are marks of the water's path, kind of like weak gritty ink. 

I've used water in some my other charcoal drawings,

so try take a look and spot them.

Alright,

hope that was useful to some of you, 

or will encourage someone to be more adventurous with their charcoal or drawing.

Cheers,

jess b

Process

Final

First of all, I am sorry for such a long post, but I think it is so much easier to see a progression in an art work when you can just scroll up and down. Rather than having to add all these different images together in your head.  Second of all I am sorry for some of the quality, focusing (or lack of), and the position of the image.  I took them with my camera phone.  

Nevertheless I wanted to share.  I get a bit annoyed when I see beautiful polished work on blogs, its nice.  But I also want to see the crap and hard work and how it looked before it turned out great.  I think its important to see stages of a work, and also learn how different people solve different visual issues.   

This is a personal piece that I started and finished recently.  I was really inspired by Melanie's work, you can't see the crazy things she thinks up and creates so much on her blog, which is a shame.  But in real life she is crazy about hair.  Human hair.  She makes giant skipping ropes out of it and braids balloons together with it.  She has a scary work place at COFA filled with hair sculptures and hair objects which happen to be horrible and beautiful at the same time. 

Very strange.

From her I got a strong image of a guy with this giant beard simply extending down off his face and consuming his neck and chest, as you can see that never manifested itself.  I tried: and it looked shit.  Also a while after I started I went to the MCA drawing show and saw Laith McGregor.  My internal image wasn't exactly the same as his bearded men, but they were very similar so I was a bit disheartened to follow through with my hairy man.

In the end however he turned out being devoid of hair, which I found quite amusing. 

This was done in charcoal on canvas.  And if the last one looks a bit funny it's because I didn't grayscale it and I was trying to be quite delicate with the levels tool, it is amazingly hard to get the tonal values right.

Hope you enjoy, I will be putting up more phone camera process images later.