Etchings, acid, mighty craic...

I worked on a new image to go along with my Pope Benedict theme.  I based my etching on the Ring of The Fisherman.  This is basically the image which appears on every Pope's ring.  Its an image of Saint Peter who was a fisherman by trade.  When a Pope dies or in Benny's case, leaves the church, the ring gets destroyed.  Therefore every new Pope gets a new ring.

So playing on that idea, I took the image of the ring and made it look as though it had been destroyed, broken into 4 pieces.  I hadnt intended on doing an etching but when I came up with this image I felt it would look really well as an etching.

Starting out I did just a typical etching, submersing the plate in the acid, applying bitumen etc.

The image of the ring wasnt standing out as much as I had wanted so I decided to then do a quick aquatint on it to make an effect on the background of the etching plate.

This came out much better.  I decided to incorporate this print into my stain glass window display aswel so I printed on fabric.

As well as prints, I'm working on a drawing stop motion which take AGES to do. Its not very neat or professional looking but I've never attempted this before so hopefully it'll be watchable when its done.  Also working on a documentary for Martin's class on the "unsung heroes" of the art college, the people who work behind the scenes.  So we've basically interviewed Anne the librarian, Sean the receptionist and the lovely Noel, the caretaker and thankfully it's coming out really well :) Just have to put the finishing touches to it and then that's another thing off the to-do list.

#SummerCountdown

Saint Angelus has a certain ring to it...

Since my last blog, college has been fairly hectic! Between long days in the print room, surrounded by acid and inhaling crazy amounts of white spirit, blisters from using the printing press and stab wounds on my hands from my woodcutting tools, its fair to say I am LIVING for summer at this point.  The day I can sit down and do nothing cannot come fast enough!

With my fabric prints of the image of the tweet and also the image of Benny looking all sad and fed up, I finally got around to making the display for them.  These prints weren't exactly met with enthusiasm but I really like them so didnt want to not use them.  I got a frame built that resembled a stain glass window which I put to great use before making my prints ;)

I'd make a great saint :P

I then painted the frame black before going about sewing together all the fabric pieces.  For someone who really cant sew I think I did a fair good job...well, it's staying together anyways :P

I'm really happy with how it came out, making myself go to college on a Saturday was worth it after all! ;)

Final Countdown...Religion in Twitter..

So we're into the last few weeks of college so its all busy busy! For this part of the semester, we're focusing on etchings and woodcuts.  I've decided to do purely woodcuts for my project as this is an area which I absolutely love, it's definitely my favourite process of printing.

I decided to stick with the whole idea of Pope Benedict leaving the church, or as I should refer to him now "His Holiness Benedict"...think I'll stick with Benny though, that's too long :P

I wanted to take a somewhat light-hearted approach to his resignation, the same approach I have when it comes to all aspects of my blasphemy fuelled work.  So, I decided to bring into the project the fact that both him and the current Pope Francis are on Twitter, which I think is just gas altogether.

So I made a woodcut of a Twitter bird with a speech box with the intention of filling things with hand-written tweets "from" Benny.

I then printed this on both Fabriano paper and fabric.  With the Fabriano, using a blue ink, I left some white whilst others I did a tea-stain on them to give them an old look.

Fabriano

Fabric (as below)

After this, I filled in some tweets from Benny.

I also did a wood carving of Benny himself to incorporate into the tweets.

Again I also printed this on to fabric.

My aim for printing on fabric is to eventually sew all these together to form a stain glass window type display.  With the frame currently being built I'm working on 2 more images that I hope to incorporate into it.

Crit tomorrow so fun times ahead! :D 

......sarcasm doesn't come across well in the written form -.- 

Setting Fire to The Pope...

Sometimes, a silk screen can decide to be such a bitch.  Which is exactly what happened me when I went to print my second image of the Pope where he is walking away.  The prints just didnt want to come out right for me....it was one of those days :P

So seeing as they didnt come out necessarily usable, I decided to alter um so that I could use them.  I decided to destroy a few of them by burning, tearing, cutting etc.  Seeing as it was all images of the Pope it can show a reaction to his resignation and also a reaction against religion.

Also did a bit of a Sinead O'Connor on it....my mother will be so proud :P

Pope Benny farewell

Seeing as the Pope resigning fits in so perfectly with my whole "people leaving the church" theme, I decided to use his image in the second part of my screen print.  I worked with two images, one where Pope Benedict is looking all powerful, arms out, at the height of his "career" and another image where he has his back turned and is hunched over.

After making a series of prints on lining paper, I then decided to try printing on other materials, in this case tshirts.

I then blackmailed my 5year old niece into helping me with a photoshoot wearing the tshirt.  I wanted to show how kids are so accepting of what the church says, so easily influenced and how they can be wearing something that means a great deal but they have little or no understanding of it.  Which is exactly what happened when the niece saw the tshirt. "Who's that?" I was asked.  Then when I tried to explain what a Pope was, she couldnt understand it so we settled on "He's a priest".