Plotting My Next Piece

I sometimes ruminate for awhile over several pieces before I get into them. Once I’ve settled on something, I will edit and revise it many times in my head before I actually get into it.

Printing elements for a piece is usually not a precision activity. It’s more like a whirlwind of paper scraps and inks mixed haphazardly, printed with wild abandon, and stacked on the rack to dry. In this case, I knew I wanted to work with shades of brown and deep red, so I pulled out some inks and plates and began printing on stuff from sheets of construction paper from Goodwill to kraft paper from Lowes Home Improvement to scraps of stuff off the floor. This will give me plenty to work with I think.

Road to Nowhere

I’m sure I’m not the only person that feels like they are on a road to nowhere. Especially now, because you know, Covid and all. I suppose this piece is more about the “and all” part of my life. Nevertheless, I am pressing forward each day.

Road to Nowhere

I am working like a fiend, which passes the time, and I am on a sabbatical from the news because I’ve had too many 3 AM panic attacks. I never in a million years thought my country would become the corrupt nightmare that it is today. It’s simply horrifying. Another road to nowhere.

I am also applying to several residencies, thinking that going somewhere, anywhere, could only help. There are some really wonderful options out there, but it would seem like getting one is a little remote. However, I don’t suppose someone is going to knock on my door with a bunch of balloons and offer me a residency without my actually applying, so I’m applying to the best ones I can find.

So, Road to Nowhere. A lot of linocuts, including the relief printed background / border, which is printed on old map pages from a vintage atlas I picked up at Goodwill.

Learn more about this piece at its gallery page

A Linocut with New Collage Images

Prints in dark blue and rust red of linocut collage elements

I really wanted some new collage elements, so I did this rather elaborate plate with lots of different elements to add to my growing collection of linocut body parts and backgrounds. There are hands, mouths, flowers, dots, beaks, oversized eyebrows, an ear and a leaf. I’m pleased because I can print up a bunch of things at once, although it takes a larger sheet of paper and it’s a nightmare to cut out.

Song to the Sanguine Moon

While I am very early in the process of developing a library of interchangeable parts, each new piece gets some old and some new elements

The Sanguine Moon

I used several elements from this plate in this piece, Song to the Sanguine Moon. I added background elements from other linocut plates, along with colored pencils and markers.

The Sanguine Moon is a full moon in October. Sanguine, in its literal translation, means blood red, and there are many wonderful drawings by old masters in sanguine chalk, which is actually more of a terracotta shade than blood red.

I really like all the names of the full moons. There are scads of them, bringing up all kinds of possibilities. I’m not sure which one will be next.

What's New in the Studio - July 31, 2020

Days of the Week Faces

I was always fascinated by the idea of “Days of the Week Panties.” I don’t remember for sure, but I’m pretty confident that I never had a set. Nowadays, it would be more likely to be “days of the week masks,” which is kind of what’s going on here. Who are we on Monday, and are we different on Friday? I suspect we are.

I’ve been playing with these all week, printing parts and drawing parts. Working out my penitent Sunday and my Wednesday “hump day,” and the subtleties that make up the days in between. I’m not entirely sure about the linear layout or how it will all finish out, so stay tuned.

We all like to think we are more unique than we actually are.

Learn more about this piece on its gallery page.

What's New In The Studio - July 19, 2020

Passionflowers and Leaves

Having finished my leaves linocut block, I printed it a bunch of times on a variety of papers. I get these papers in rolls that are discarded from a local manufacturer, and most of them are just white in a variety of weights and finishes, but occasionally they toss out some more interesting textures and colors, so I used a lot of those items along with various papers I have piled around the studio, many of which are probably not archival but I like them anyway.

I also carved and printed a relief plate with three different versions of a passionflower, and printed that up as well. I cut all this stuff out and arranged and rearranged until I go the body shape I wanted for the woman in my next piece. Then I carefully tacked her together with glue and added some stronger pieces to the back to keep her together. I am putting her in a large mandorla which I will construct next.

A Linocut Buffet of Foliage and Body Parts

Soft linoleum block with body parts
Natalie Schorr - 2020

I am working on some mixed media collage pieces that use mostly elements I have made, as opposed to elements I have found. Not that one is better than another, I guess they just express my current state of thinking more accurately. In doing this, I have gathered together several old relief cut blocks and started creating some new linocuts of body parts and other elements that may be useful over and over.

These body pieces are proving to be very inspirational for me. I picked up this soft cut linoleum block from Dick Blick. It’s fairly thick, so I carved both sides. The opposite side is carved mostly with manicules. I printed them up in an array of colors, and I’ll use them over and over.

This weekend I also carved up a large lino plate with just leaves. They are another element I can see using a lot, so I drew out a bunch of different shapes. I hope to start printing with these later

Linocut block with leaf shapes
Natalie Schorr - 2020

I think you will see these leaves and body parts a lot in the coming months.

Telling a Story with Original Prints

I admire my friends who do plein air. They go out and just spontaneously paint. There is very little about a drypoint print that could be considered spontaneous. That being said, it doesn’t have to be a means to a cold, black and white end.

Leaning Rowhouses [green]

I did a residency at Remarque New Grounds Print Workshop in Albuquerque in February 2019. I had my drypoint plates already done since they were large and took days to etch, and when I got there I printed like a fiend, which I think drove my whole cohort crazy. Then I shipped everything home and thought about it for several months.

When I first tried my hand at printmaking, I took a little six week class in traditional etching, and we were taught to make multiples that needed to look as much alike as possible. Boring. So in the years since, I have looked for new ways to approach printmaking that would be more flexible. Not quite plein air, but certainly not a series of pieces all just alike.

I like to think of printmaking as a way to tell a story with a different ending each time. Let me show you.

Drypoint collage in progress

I did this plate while I was at Remarque. It was a line of rowhouses with power lines running alongside, which I had photographed from an odd angle. I did a number of prints of this plate, among which were a series in deep red ink on cream and pink found papers and wallpaper, and a series in green and black inks on green ledger paper.

Old books, vintage wallpaper, and Goodwill finds are some of my favorite things.

After several months of beneficial rumination, I took out my pieces and composed two versions of the plate. [more to come]

At the top of this photo you can see a plain print of the plate in black ink on a single sheet of paper. This is my key image, which allows me to fit the collage pieces together on top. That image gets fully covered in the collage process. Then I have a lot of little pieces that have bits of the overall image printed on them, and these will be composed and collaged together.

Once the collage is completed, I go into it with watercolor, acrylic, or colored pencil to bring out features I want to emphasize. In previous ones, everything was covered in clear acrylic so they could be framed without glass, but these I made without the acrylic coating.

The finished pieces in this method are all very unique, and though not as spontaneous as plein air, for me they tell the same story, each one with its own ending. I like that.

Leaning Rowhouses [pink]

See Leaning Rowhouses [green] on its gallery page to learn more.
See Leaning Rowhouses [pink] on its gallery page to learn more.

Artist Residency at Remarque New Grounds Print Workshop

I recently spent a week as one of five Artists in Residence at Remarque New Grounds Print Workshop in Albuquerque NM. It was my first time on a residency, and it was an great experience.

Mary, Jennifer, and Christine collaborating on a print

The facility at Remarque is really well planned and maintained. Available are numerous Takach presses in a wide variety of sizes. Lots of work tables at standing height and good lighting mean plenty of space for creative opportunities. There are also spaces for airbrushing aquatints, vertical etching tanks, and an exposure unit for solar plates. Additionally, there is a large, open classroom area and two galleries exhibiting an awesome array of printmaking styles.

Two of the owners, Lincoln Draper and Mary Sundstrom, have been available most of the day to answer questions and share techniques. Their generosity with their time and knowledge has been inspiring for all of us, and we’ve had a good time learning from them and each other.

The week at Remarque allowed me the opportunity to do some very large prints; much bigger than I could achieve on my press at home. The spacious facility made pulling these prints much easier, as all the things I needed from soaking trays to drying racks were there and readily available. Having a plan for what I wanted to accomplish in place before I got there meant that I was able to get a lot done as well.

It’s been an intense week of work, but very rewarding. I’d recommend taking a tour of the Remarque facilities if you are ever in Albuquerque, and consider taking a class or becoming a member if you live in the Albuquerque area. Never stop learning.

Drypoint - Variations on a Classic Printmaking Technique

I love to experiment with printmaking. Never having been very good at following the rules for making an edition, I have the most fun when I stray from the norm, as I did with these collaged drypoint prints.

Rust Belt Row Houses 2/4 VE, by Natalie Schorr 2018

I wanted to do some printmaking pieces based on photos I took over the summer of some favorite Rust Belt cities. Industrial sites and old row houses are ubiquitous in these areas, and they bring back memories of the years I lived in Pittsburgh. I also wanted to recapture the feeling of a memory, where things are a little fuzzy, pieced together, and imperfect; more the soul of the memory than the accuracy of the reality.

I started with a drawing from a photo, which allowed me to work out the details and make a few edits. The drawing was made to the size I wanted the final piece to be. I chose a fairly extreme upward angle, a sort of child's point of view. Then I got a couple of pieces of clear acrylic, neither of which was large enough to do the entire piece, but each large enough to do more than half the piece.

I placed my first clear acrylic sheet over the drawing I had made. Using diamond point and carbide scribes, I simply scratched my image into the surface of the acrylic. No solvents, acids, or hazardous fumes. Just scratching. That's the beauty of drypoint. It's something you can walk away from and come back to anytime, with no worry that you will mess something up. It's really low tech.

Inked acrylic drypoint plate drawn without a straightedge

After I finished my first drypoint plate, I put down the second piece of acrylic and did the same. This meant there were areas of the total image that were drawn on both plates; however, they were not exactly the same, just approximately. I also did my drypoint using no straight edges, which meant that lines got pretty wavy, contributing to the memory aspect I wanted to achieve. 

Using acrylic plates for drypoint has both advantages and disadvantages. One advantage of acrylic is that it's transparent, so you can place it right over your drawing, eliminating the need to transfer your image to the plate. Another big advantage to using acrylic is that it's a whole lot cheaper than using a copper or zinc plate. The main disadvantage is that it doesn't really push up much of a burr to catch the ink, so you don't really get the fuzzy line that you get when doing a drypoint in metal. The result is a little cleaner, more like an etching without all the annoying toxic stuff.

Once I was happy with my plates, I launched into the printing. I used Akua Intaglio Inks, mostly Red Oxide and Carbon Black, with a couple of other colors thrown in. The goal was for the plates to be not inked in the same colors throughout the series, so I just mixed things together somewhat irregularly, but keeping with the sort of rusty brown theme.

Acrylic drypoint plate laid out with scraps of paper and ephemera

I printed each plate multiple times using all sorts of paper scraps. Sometimes I printed the plate on a single sheet, but mostly they were printed on multiple sheets, incorporating pages of old books, vintage wallpaper, and handwritten ephemera into the mix.

Piles of partial drypoint image impressions, ready for collaging

Once I had a big pile of image pieces, I began the collaging process. It's good to note that you will want to have at least twice the number of printed pieces as you will have finished collages, as you need that many to have enough to compose what you want. So for my 4 finished collages, I actually printed my plates 8-9 times each.

I used a backing sheet and arranged and glued each composition using heavy acrylic medium. Because it has less water, it makes a good adhesive that doesn't swell the fibers in the papers.

Collage showing variations resulting from different papers, ink colors, and plate tone

Once the collages were done, I primed each piece with clear acrylic on top, and colored them with thin washes of acrylic paint, being mindful to let the drypoint show through. Each piece was done differently, but kept within the color scheme I liked best from a Pinterest board I made to establish the dominant colors of the area.

Rust Belt Row Houses 2/4 VE
Rust Belt Row Houses 4/4 VE