I upgraded but haven't used the new illustrator yet. I noticed that some of the smoothing on the 2018 PS is not super compatible with my computer, but I wouldn't call any of it major issues.
Does illustrator do the whole scratch disks thing? Maybe you can mess around with your settings?
Just cracked my next ream of newsprint paper. That marks 2000 pages of newsprint since I started on this "totally serious this time guys I mean it seriously stop laughing" crack at drawing.
Congrats dude!
My 9 year old nephew was visiting so I pulled out a stack of printer paper and crayons/colored pencils for him on the living room table. He drew so much stuff that now I'm thinking hm, maybe I should leave this out all the time and take a lesson from his productivity
Like the thread title mentions, I recently decided I wanted to pick up a new hobby and decided to get into linocutting after wanting an Ex Libris stamp for my personal library and not finding anything that I liked online. That led to reading up about stamp carving and relief printmaking, which prompted a hazy memory of enjoying doing a linocut print in a middle school art class a couple of decades ago.
Just a quick background on my art history since I've never posted in the Artist's Corner before: I am pretty terrible at drawing and never worked to improve those skills, partially due to no big interest in improving and partially from a lack of encouragement from art teachers in the past. I have made a few pieces of abstract art for my house focused on color, shape and texture play, but nothing that requires fine motor skills. :biggrin: I enjoy working with my hands and have done furniture restoration, some wood carving, pottery, and model airplane painting in the past, so I thought this project may tie into any skills/interests I already have.
I plan to put together a post in the next day or so showing the progress I've made so far to offer up for any critiques but in the meantime, has anyone worked in this medium before, or more broadly done any relief printing, that can offer up any advice on techniques or things to look out for? My first project is planned to be a 5x7 print of a pineapple for a Christmas present for my spouse (she likes the way they look and it's a running joke/scavenger hunt in our house that there is an image/sculpture of a pineapple in pretty much every room, so I figure one more can't hurt!) so I hope a deadline will push me to put in the work at a steady pace.
Equipment purchased so far:
A dozen sheets of 5"x7" battleship grey linoleum
A tub of black oil-based relief ink
A 4" soft rubber brayer (it came with a tube of black ink which I didn't know about when ordering, but I don't remember if it's oil or water-based)
A set of gouges and stropping set from Flexcut
A bench hook because I was too lazy to make one :P
I still need to find a chunk of glass for rolling ink but that's a low priority at the moment, and all the art paper I have in the house right now is probably too thick/textured to produce clean prints so I may need to go out and get some paper as well.
Hey @m!ttens, rolled this into the chat thread since new threads are reserved for art getting critiques. Feel free to copy that over to a new thread when you are ready to post some work.
A few people around have done some lino-cuts. I'm an amateur, I did a few last year, though. I only recommend making sure you cut away from yourself and keep those blades well away from your other hand. I'm very clumbsy and didn't have a place to secure my work to a table, so I protected my other hand with a glove (after cutting myself first, of course)
Ok that's fine, sorry if I violated any rules, Iruka, I was just bored on my lunch so thought I would post an OP placeholder and upload some photos this evening. Right now I've made my initial sketch, then did a graphite transfer over to the lino and traced over that with a sharpie because I knew I would smear everything into the point of non-visibility. I have tomorrow off for the holiday so I'll probably get started on my cuts tonight or tomorrow at the latest!
----
Edit to avoid double-posting:
I've pulled some photos off my phone, namely the tracing I made on vellum paper over my original sketch, and then the lino block after doing a rubbing from the vellum and retracing with a sharpie.
I'm planning to carve out the whitespace in the pineapple fruit area and leave the leaves (har har) in raised relief for a bit of contrast against the fruit. The significance of the E & W pattern is that's my wife's initials
Wish it was sugar causing these wobbly lines but seems muscle memory fades quickly. I'd been using a ruler to practice 3 point perspective for a few days and now my free hand lines are either wobbly or are straight off to Gibraltar.
Yeah those are the ones I stopped doing for a few days. Think it was my grip on the pen. Was holding it really tightly when using the ruler over the past few days. Once I loosened it up a bit lines were more accurate and straight.
While it's not straight up an "art-of" book, I picked up The Future Is Now by Josan Gonzales, has a very cyberpunk feel. It's also a story/graphic novel (sans dialog), the detail in every page reminds me a bit of the original Akira novels. Definitely enjoy getting lost in its pages.
Switching to a 'daylight' bulb after using a 'warm white' for years is really weird. It's like switching from an old lcd which has a slightly yellow tinge no matter how it's adjusted to a modern one with a good icc profile. Or the difference between 80s/90s US soaps again like the Young and the Restless and todays TV.
This bulb is remote control and can switch colours but I mainly bought it for the ability to adjust the bulb later at night since there's only one light in here. Last time we had a 'daylight' bulb in here it was too bright at night and kept me up to all hours over winter.
As a plus we can have a mini rave in my room.
edit: Just googled that show. It's still going. My gran used to watch it all the time when she watched us as kids. That and Eldorado.
Uh, hey guys... what's up?
also, @flay the new Syd Mead art book looks killer. I got the Sentury ones a couple years ago and they're kinda underwhelming, not the movie material I was searching for, but looks like The Movie Art of Syd Mead has it all.
I finished carving my first project tonight! Here's a low-angle shot to show the relief, and a straight on shot through a mirror to show what it will look like when printed. I screwed up my first try when I realized about 1/4 of the way through that all my letter Es would be backwards once printed. Unfortunate but I'm glad I caught my mistake relatively early and it was good to practice cuts before I restarted with the new block.
I think I made my cuts way too deep but I didn't know how shallow I could make something to avoid getting inked. My next piece of lino will probably just be some technique practice to work on shading for light and dark sections. If anyone has any critiques or good resources to point me towards it would be much appreciated!
Uh, hey guys... what's up?
also, @flay the new Syd Mead art book looks killer. I got the Sentury ones a couple years ago and they're kinda underwhelming, not the movie material I was searching for, but looks like The Movie Art of Syd Mead has it all.
Sweet I haven't heard of that one.
On that topic I was really excited for the Blade Runner 2049 artbook, but it's actually pretty disappointing. Best purchase I've made this year was the Japanese version of the Bloodborne artbook. The english version has terrible magazine paper stock and the type is basically unreadable, but the Japanese softcover version has way nicer paper, and most of the text is in English too.
Today I went out to the other side of town that has fancy art supplies and bought a nice piece of paper for making prints and a pad of nice drawing paper for doing some tests. Then after we got home of course I had to immediately go make a test print from my linocut. Here is the second test print that I made (N.B. I bumped up the brightness in the image because it's a little dim in my basement):
I'm going to carve off some of those high marks on the outside to get a cleaner print and maybe get some of the slightly smudgier cells on the inside. The final printing paper is a really nice creamy color. Then it's off to go figure out a nice matte and frame and my wife's xmas gift will be complete!
Next projects I'm considering are an Ex Libris stamp (maybe a 2"x3" size) with a doodle of my dog curled up sleeping and another 5"x7" block print of one of my dogs' heads (or maybe I can do one of each).
Today I realized I think I'm going to take almost as long figuring out and taping on the registration for the second color as I did just trying to print the first color.
I'm bad at this and manual registration seems like an art unto itself. If people are interested I will post pictures with what I end up deciding to rig up.
Speaking of animation, Arin from Game Grumps put up these videos where he goes through some of his older animation flash files, which are kinda interesting as it quickly goes from a 'making of' to a 'man I could do this better let me show you how' self critique. Maybe not Disney's finest animation at work here, but there's some good advice in there about how to squeeze just a little bit more life out of limited animation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFPkzhjlUYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DhJlzbfAuo
I thought flash crashing at the end was the most appropriate part of the second video. I also did not realize how much of the star bomb stuff he did himself, that dude must work 24/7.
I think I'm gonna have to put art on pause until I can suss out these stupid technical pens. Either the wire is bent (doubtful) the weight or seal is blocked or there's still some moisture in the mechanism which is making my ink run and well up at the end, thus rendering line work and stippling almost impossible. I ordered a cleaning kit with a little gear wrench so I can take the pen mechanism apart and hopefully clean and/or dry it.
I had to abandon a drawing halfway through because i just couldn't keep fighting the pen and now my mood is all shot to hell.
They're a pain in the ass, yeah but when they work they work really well. I like them a lot more than dip pens.
I think this is operator error. Last time I cleaned them I didn't completely disassemble the mechanism and I think there's moisture inside which is making the ink run really thin.
It might depend on the brand you're using? Like, I remember my mother telling me that Rapidographs would clog up constantly...so Microns were a better [and more modern] choice if you were looking for a very very small line width.
I think the two big refillable cartridge technical pen brands are Rotring and Koh-i-noor. I'm using koh-i-noor. The thing with the technical pen is that as long as you use it consistently you really shouldn't have any clogging issues. The problem is when they sit for weeks and the ink crusts up inside. Or in my case it flows too freely.
I like then mainly because they're refillable. If I'm working on a bigger piece I can about blow through an entire Micron so I usually end up buying new pens every time, which can add up. So there's a bigger investment up front but I think ultimately it pays for itself. If I had a lot more space and a whole art station I'd probably be using nib pens instead, but the rapidographs are semi portable and about the same amount of work I think for way more ink per... stroke?
I haven't used that type of pen, but I've noticed a difference in the life of the other pens I own, if I store them point-side-down. If you store them upside-down, maybe try reversing it and see if that helps? Also maybe cleaning the nibs right after use?
I'm sort of toying with the idea of renting an office space for an art studio and after a couple of hours of searching I think I may have found the only reasonably priced place in this dumb town. So I may end up sending a little inquiry email to them just to check it out.
What I really want is one of those old garage buildings from the 50 or 60's that seem to pepper every downtown area and, as far as I can tell, have had no use whatsoever in 20 years. It would be the perfect size, concrete floors for serious arting, and roll up garage doors so I can open em up in the spring and summer. I may have to go an expedition and see if I can find anything.
I'm sort of toying with the idea of renting an office space for an art studio and after a couple of hours of searching I think I may have found the only reasonably priced place in this dumb town. So I may end up sending a little inquiry email to them just to check it out.
What I really want is one of those old garage buildings from the 50 or 60's that seem to pepper every downtown area and, as far as I can tell, have had no use whatsoever in 20 years. It would be the perfect size, concrete floors for serious arting, and roll up garage doors so I can open em up in the spring and summer. I may have to go an expedition and see if I can find anything.
Too bad we're on opposite ends of the country, I'd go in halfsies with you.
HA! Just spent an hour disassembling and cleaning my rapidographs and I think I fixed them. No more blobbing.
That white ink I was using, despite saying it was for technical pens was really runny and started drying put and flaking super quick so I went ahead and ordered a couple of bottles of white and black (and red) rapidograph specific ink. But now I can at least get some semblance of work done now. I've basically been dead in the water for the last week.
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In other news, anyone using the new version of CC Illustrator? Its running like total trash on these brand new imacs at work.
Does illustrator do the whole scratch disks thing? Maybe you can mess around with your settings?
Havent been posting rando animations lately. (Slightly NSFW)
Congrats dude!
My 9 year old nephew was visiting so I pulled out a stack of printer paper and crayons/colored pencils for him on the living room table. He drew so much stuff that now I'm thinking hm, maybe I should leave this out all the time and take a lesson from his productivity
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
Like the thread title mentions, I recently decided I wanted to pick up a new hobby and decided to get into linocutting after wanting an Ex Libris stamp for my personal library and not finding anything that I liked online. That led to reading up about stamp carving and relief printmaking, which prompted a hazy memory of enjoying doing a linocut print in a middle school art class a couple of decades ago.
Just a quick background on my art history since I've never posted in the Artist's Corner before: I am pretty terrible at drawing and never worked to improve those skills, partially due to no big interest in improving and partially from a lack of encouragement from art teachers in the past. I have made a few pieces of abstract art for my house focused on color, shape and texture play, but nothing that requires fine motor skills. :biggrin: I enjoy working with my hands and have done furniture restoration, some wood carving, pottery, and model airplane painting in the past, so I thought this project may tie into any skills/interests I already have.
I plan to put together a post in the next day or so showing the progress I've made so far to offer up for any critiques but in the meantime, has anyone worked in this medium before, or more broadly done any relief printing, that can offer up any advice on techniques or things to look out for? My first project is planned to be a 5x7 print of a pineapple for a Christmas present for my spouse (she likes the way they look and it's a running joke/scavenger hunt in our house that there is an image/sculpture of a pineapple in pretty much every room, so I figure one more can't hurt!) so I hope a deadline will push me to put in the work at a steady pace.
Equipment purchased so far:
I still need to find a chunk of glass for rolling ink but that's a low priority at the moment, and all the art paper I have in the house right now is probably too thick/textured to produce clean prints so I may need to go out and get some paper as well.
A few people around have done some lino-cuts. I'm an amateur, I did a few last year, though. I only recommend making sure you cut away from yourself and keep those blades well away from your other hand. I'm very clumbsy and didn't have a place to secure my work to a table, so I protected my other hand with a glove (after cutting myself first, of course)
----
Edit to avoid double-posting:
I've pulled some photos off my phone, namely the tracing I made on vellum paper over my original sketch, and then the lino block after doing a rubbing from the vellum and retracing with a sharpie.
I'm planning to carve out the whitespace in the pineapple fruit area and leave the leaves (har har) in raised relief for a bit of contrast against the fruit. The significance of the E & W pattern is that's my wife's initials
Same happens with caffiene and inking. Don't think of it as an obstruction; think of it as a handicap!
Quick, eat a bunch of pizza to weigh yourself back down. It's the only way!
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
It's been 2 days dammit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgDNDOKnArk&t=7s
The video is made from animation of some stills from the book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRve8Gsby5o
My Portfolio Site
This bulb is remote control and can switch colours but I mainly bought it for the ability to adjust the bulb later at night since there's only one light in here. Last time we had a 'daylight' bulb in here it was too bright at night and kept me up to all hours over winter.
As a plus we can have a mini rave in my room.
edit: Just googled that show. It's still going. My gran used to watch it all the time when she watched us as kids. That and Eldorado.
also, @flay the new Syd Mead art book looks killer. I got the Sentury ones a couple years ago and they're kinda underwhelming, not the movie material I was searching for, but looks like The Movie Art of Syd Mead has it all.
I think I made my cuts way too deep but I didn't know how shallow I could make something to avoid getting inked. My next piece of lino will probably just be some technique practice to work on shading for light and dark sections. If anyone has any critiques or good resources to point me towards it would be much appreciated!
Sweet I haven't heard of that one.
On that topic I was really excited for the Blade Runner 2049 artbook, but it's actually pretty disappointing. Best purchase I've made this year was the Japanese version of the Bloodborne artbook. The english version has terrible magazine paper stock and the type is basically unreadable, but the Japanese softcover version has way nicer paper, and most of the text is in English too.
I'm going to carve off some of those high marks on the outside to get a cleaner print and maybe get some of the slightly smudgier cells on the inside. The final printing paper is a really nice creamy color. Then it's off to go figure out a nice matte and frame and my wife's xmas gift will be complete!
Next projects I'm considering are an Ex Libris stamp (maybe a 2"x3" size) with a doodle of my dog curled up sleeping and another 5"x7" block print of one of my dogs' heads (or maybe I can do one of each).
I fixed all my ink related issues, yay.
Today I realized I think I'm going to take almost as long figuring out and taping on the registration for the second color as I did just trying to print the first color.
I'm bad at this and manual registration seems like an art unto itself. If people are interested I will post pictures with what I end up deciding to rig up.
Super interesting animation,
A real trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMxXgbXtUxo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFPkzhjlUYg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DhJlzbfAuo
Twitter
I had to abandon a drawing halfway through because i just couldn't keep fighting the pen and now my mood is all shot to hell.
I think this is operator error. Last time I cleaned them I didn't completely disassemble the mechanism and I think there's moisture inside which is making the ink run really thin.
I like then mainly because they're refillable. If I'm working on a bigger piece I can about blow through an entire Micron so I usually end up buying new pens every time, which can add up. So there's a bigger investment up front but I think ultimately it pays for itself. If I had a lot more space and a whole art station I'd probably be using nib pens instead, but the rapidographs are semi portable and about the same amount of work I think for way more ink per... stroke?
What I really want is one of those old garage buildings from the 50 or 60's that seem to pepper every downtown area and, as far as I can tell, have had no use whatsoever in 20 years. It would be the perfect size, concrete floors for serious arting, and roll up garage doors so I can open em up in the spring and summer. I may have to go an expedition and see if I can find anything.
Too bad we're on opposite ends of the country, I'd go in halfsies with you.
That white ink I was using, despite saying it was for technical pens was really runny and started drying put and flaking super quick so I went ahead and ordered a couple of bottles of white and black (and red) rapidograph specific ink. But now I can at least get some semblance of work done now. I've basically been dead in the water for the last week.