http://www.printeresting.org/2009/09/09/printshop-tour-uga/

check printeresting for a glimpse of the studio life of UGA.

Also, i recently picked up some batteries for the ol’ camera.  So ill post some new stuff over the weekend, although the printerpoopin’ post of the uga printshop has a few pics of what i’ve been up to.

- phil jasen

larger scale stuff is being done, but i don’t plan on uploading any of it too soon.  These are small things i worked on upon first arriving in my studio space.

Not much new.  graduate school has just started, been preppin’ plates and doin groundwork for getting stuff going more-so than doodlin’ and drawings.  Here’s another quick late night drawing done with watercolor pencils.

two drawings,  one night.  scraps of paper.  rives bfk grey and the more evenly rectangular shaped piece about 9″x7″ and on the back of a pretty atrocious painting/drawing experiment.  The other work is two thin strips of scraps taped together along a middle horizon.  The lower is i believe rives bfk tan, im not 100%.  It feels like it, but it doesnt take wet media nearly as well as rives grey, which seems unusual to me.  I don’t understand how a same paper type but with different coloring would react so differently, but i suppose its possible- or maybe its just not rives.  It’s certainly not stonehenge which I know is pretty poor at withstanding water. The top and longer slice is rives bfk grey.

ya can click to see this larger.  usually things are shrunk in wordpress to fit the blog entry.  if you’re clever you can view them at 1000px width even when i dont add links.

the change in tone with the right edge is due to the length being longer than my scanner could fit in one sweep.  They weren’t all fancily adjusted in photoshop in a mismatched manner, the darker tone is cause the paper was not flush to the glass and raised at that edge since some paper was popping out over one side.  I’m quite unsure how to use photoshop for image cleaning.  Sometimes the works look different scanned, and i have brightened them to look more like in reality, but sometimes you can also do things which make the image more appealing than it is in reality, and that’s something i’d really rather not do.

the prologue.

the beginnings.

lookin’ at the top image.  you can see a slice from the right edge was cut out and used in the previous drawing posted here.  these two are probably not complete, but also probably won’t be reworked until more of the series is done so there can be some kinda harmonious link between ‘em all.

“[Rake's Progress] a series of eight paintings by 18th century English artist William Hogarth.  The series shows the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, the spendthrift son and heir of a rich merchant, who comes to London, wastes all his money on luxurious living, prostitution and gambling, and as a consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately Bedlam. The original paintings are currently in the collection of the Soane Museum in London.”

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rake%27s_Progress

that’s actually a really bad introduction/synopsis.  Look at the works, the Hogarth etchings are on wiki.  Then look at David Hockney’s.  http://www.hockneypictures.com/graphics_rakes_progress/graphics_rakes_01.php

early version.  ok, nothin special.  Figure to left, obvious Degas rip off.  The figure also has unusual shading/value for my drawings.  but some of the interest in that is lost as washes surround the figure.  Second figure.  Drawn with pens and not that “light” style of figure to left.  Pens lend themselves almost inevitably toward caricatures.  Sometimes i forget this, and play too much into it.  The face is illustrative and not in a mask or graphic interesting way such as Ensor.  In a boring way.  Then there is the figure to right which is half etching.  The way the colored pencil glided over the bottom of that rives paper was really nice and noticeable in contrast to the way I was havin’ a hard time with lines over this linen paper.  The way some things sink into the tooth of papers is usually frustrating, i dont like arches due to it.  Filling a space or shape just doesn’t work.  Ya instead get these things that look like ya rubbed some soft charcoal over it and had some weird gridded surface beneath the paper giving you an uneven mark.

After some reworking.  Added stuff to foreground. Took slice from another drawing I was not happy with and put it in here.  Started to almost completely block out the middle child. 

white light.  white lines.  sometimes good, sometimes silly.

parts referenced from personal photo.  allows for completely different form of drawing.  observational is easy to draw figures larger and lines more sensitively.

meh. gonna do more.  with this set, i thought, one will be simpler and linear whereas the second will be pushed much further with ink and lines upon lines.  This isnt pushed to an extreme level, so its rather mediocre.

small.  hard to draw small scale stuff without boggling up your little lines and overworking areas.  things dont pop out as strongly when thin, so mistakenly you may try just piling more and more on top waiting for it to pop, then soon realize you’re doing it wrong.  etching + drawing.  outdated pop culture reference.  might re-work, might leave as is.  being left with pile of scraps and drawings to re-work or cut up and use elsewhere.

sometimes its easier to look at these works as “finished” when viewed on the computer.  after making it last night and viewing it in my hands i keep thinking of what more marks to make or sections to wash over.  on a computer you are taking it as is, you may want to rework stuff, but it has to wait and you are free to think of the work in a more holistic view.  its kinda like putting it on the wall and stepping back from it.

Adam and Eve. 8.5×11, okay not special.  Points of interest; varying levels of finish, colorful.  should maybe lose the snake.  something interesting is going on with the sun and tree color choices separated by the ink wash from the ink drawn waterfall and left tree.  Its also echoed in the more drawn male figure with some lazy coloring compared to incomplete line drawn female.

something.  pentimenti all over the place.  gesso white on cream paper, always lookin good.  colorful wash, to obstruct earlier drawn objects and prepare surface for new overlayed imagery.  varnish coating on entire surface gives it real finished kinda look in person.  continuation of water/wave stuff.

I’ve started to try being really organized with my drawings in the last year.  I think it would be a pretty valuable resource to have a personal catalog to look back to.  This basically means my drawings on 8.5×11″ paper are no longer discarded.  Instead my preferred treatment is this. I use those glossy paper holders and load up a bunch inside a three ring binder.  The binder is then labelled a year or season or some time based grouping.  Say Summer 2008.  Within that binder youll find a not necessarily neat, but at least organized jumbling of my papers.  To save money and space from having to have so many glossy holders, there’s usually 3-7 papers within each page holder.

Perhaps ill come back to these old small drawings for ideas in the future.  Perhaps if i’m teaching they’ll be a helpful thing to show students.  The quality of professional work to a youth may be alienating, yet if you can communicate with ‘em based upon your work from at that same point in life, maybe there will be more commonalities to discuss.

Here’s some example doodles from 2008.