Friday, April 11, 2008

work continues

I think I finished up a couple of plates, but I'm still mulling them over a bit. I have a handful of unfinished ones that are proving to be a bit of a struggle still. Here are the two I'm thinking might be done, in any case.

new etching

DSCN8122

We also got down to Skagit Valley to see the daffodil fields, and hope to return to see the tulips some time this weekend. This time I'll bring along my little tripod so the photos are less blurry!

DSCN8103

DSCN8095

I'm still planning the aquating substitute experiment with pressing sugar into soft ground, but I haven't had a chance to do that yet. I'll post images when I do!

Thursday, April 3, 2008

art advice from long ago

As I struggle with a plate that just won't come out right, I'm reminded of a piece of advice an art teacher gave me when I was in college. She was small and spry and wore hats made of bright yarn that came to a point on the top of her head, like a Hershey's Kiss. She had a German accent and paint under her fingernails.

One day in class she watched as I painted out a large section of something I had been working on for a week. "Why did you do that?" she asked.

"It didn't look the way I wanted."

"It's not important that it look the way you want it to look. It's only important that it say the thing you want it to say."

And it's true, I think. I almost never make something that looks the way it looks in my head, a perfect copy of an idea or hope or aspiration. I make the best representation of that idea that I am able, and I stop when it begins to give off a sense of that feeling that I have when I imagine my idea, that feeling beyond words and my own capacity as a draftsman.

So that's where I'm going with this one. It won't look how I want it to look, and it won't be anything I planned on making, but if I'm lucky, it might speak to the viewer of the small truth I had in mind when I decided to make it.