Dry Point
"The Bad"
12.7cm x 17.78cm
Ink on Paper
November, 2016
12.7cm x 17.78cm
Ink on Paper
November, 2016
Just like my Block Print and my Digital Collage, Dry Point was a first for me, I have never even heard of dry point before this project. I mentioned in my Block Print how I wanted to have the two pieces (block print and dry point) have a connection or a shared theme. I really liked this idea of “Man vs Nature”. I knew that with the Dry Point it would turn out a lot darker with the ink, this drove me to use this side to represent the bad (mankind. The main focus is the greatly damaging effects against nature.
Inspirational Artist/Work
The artist/piece of work that inspired my Dry Point is the same exact piece/artist that inspired my Block Print. It was the "Preservation" piece by ShortCircuit123 (Paul). Paul is a man from Netherlands that creates digital art and photo-manipulations on website called DeviantArt. I had already known about this website and it's contents, which contains many other artists like Paul.
I accidentally stumbled upon this piece in late September, 2016. When I saw it it was the incredible amount of detail and sense of surrealism that I really appreciated and fell in love with. Many of Paul's other works also hold this amount of detail and surrealism as well and I wanted to give my dry point those same aspects. |
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Brainstorming
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I also made a more detailed sketch by drawing the hand that I will be carving. I did this so I could get a general image of what it will look like proportion wise and so I could basically trace over this image while carving.
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Process
- Choosing the Half- So the first step is definitely selecting the half that will be getting carved and cropping it so I can focus only on that hand.
- Drawing- Once the half is selected I have to complete my personal favorite step which is the drawing portion. This is where I draw the hand inside a square that I made by tracing around the edge of the plastic.
- Choosing a background- I had a couple ideas of different backgrounds I could create, shown in my brainstorming sketches. I came to a conclusion that the vertical lines I created would deliver a more dreary image and have the piece give off the tone I was hoping.
- Outlining- Now when I carve onto the plastic, all I have to do is place it over the drawing I previously made and basically trace the image. I started off with just the basic outlines.
- Adding Texture- After I had the outlining done, I had to add some of the textures to the smoke from the pipes or the knuckles of the fingers, the crack in the hands, etc. This was not a step I was really excited for at all, it took a bit more time than the other steps and it required a little bit more focus and concentration than the other steps as well even though all I had to do was slowly scratch the plastic in random directions while using the inspirational piece as a reference image.
- Shading- Shading is one of the easiest steps in my opinion. I made sure to completely carve an area that would be completely black, and for the areas that would less shaded I attempted to use a sort of hatching method and in some areas a bit of cross-hatching.
- Inking- The start of the inking process began with covering the enitre the piece with a thin layer of ink. After that I'd use some newsprint to wipe off all the extra, unecessary ink.
- Pressing/Printing- Having the lines and scratches covered in ink allowed me to use a rolling press to transfer the ink onto a seperate sheet of paper that I placed underneath the piece when adding the pressure. Luckily for me the first print turned out really pleasing, having not too much or too little ink.
Reflection
I’m not 100% disappointed with the piece. I am pleased with the fact that I accurately got the proportions down, and the overall detail I managed to interpret; even if it isn’t as much as I hoped for.
Although I had a different image in my head at the beginning, I am not completely disappointed with my final results. I found that I consistently have too high of expectations for almost all my works and that I constantly don’t reach that bar I set for myself. Especially with this piece. I had hopes of it looking extremely detailed and have a strong sense of that Surrealism I was trying to achieve, this was all before I actually started carving into the plastic and realizing how much practice and experience I would have needed to reach those goals I had mentally set.
Although I had a different image in my head at the beginning, I am not completely disappointed with my final results. I found that I consistently have too high of expectations for almost all my works and that I constantly don’t reach that bar I set for myself. Especially with this piece. I had hopes of it looking extremely detailed and have a strong sense of that Surrealism I was trying to achieve, this was all before I actually started carving into the plastic and realizing how much practice and experience I would have needed to reach those goals I had mentally set.
ACT Connections
- Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork. ShortCircuit123, or Paul, had am overwhelming amount of detail in every single one of his pieces, and detail and Surrealism were two main objectives of mine for my Block Print. This shows how Paul's work helped me set the goals I wanted for this project.
- What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration? I think that Paul definitely notices the problems of damage to nature from man. I think that he used this topic to create a piece that needed no words to express the message to others.
- What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration? One conclusion I made was that a lot of people really do overlook the damage caused to nature by man. Also how no one is actually paying any attention to some major problems unless something, like a picture, makes them realizes the reality of the issue.
- What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research? As mentioned in my answer for question 1, two of my main goals for my dry point was details and surrealism. DeviantArt is a website I knew contained a lot of very detailed pieces of work from many artists, I decided that's where I'd look for a "detailed/surrealist" artist.
- What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?