Sunday 22 June 2014

WINTER DAVE PRINT

Hello everyone!
Yesterday I made my 'Winter' submission for Art Club, which is a portrait of Dave - a lovely friend in Melbourne who is the uncle of even more lovely friends.  I think Dave is a terrific human being and for a while I have been wanting to make an artwork using his face.  I originally took some photos of Dave way back in 2011 and finally decided to use these photos for this month's theme.

  The artwork is a lino print/cut, measuring 30 x 30cm.  I started the process by playing around in Photoshop and manipulating the image to have lots of dark shadows.  Dave is also wearing a wooly jumper which I also added in Photoshop.

I also attended a workshop at the Silk Cut factory in Highett yesterday, which was ran by the wonderful printmaker, Heather Shimmen.  Heather makes lovely layered prints with incredible detail, and was incredibly generous and sharing with ideas and tips for novice printmakers like me.  She introduced the class to working on a gesso surface on the lino surface - which I hadn't tried before.  Some of the marks on Dave's print are due to the gesso paint brush marks - which I think work really well with this image.  

Hope you like (I'm a bit chuffed with how it turned out)! 

Gillian x



Cutting the block...

The original photo of Dave....taken way back in 2012! (Yes, it takes me a while to get to working on projects, but I eventually get there!)