Block Print |
All in the Cards
Block Print 40cm x 50cm September 2019 Exhibition Text "All in the Cards" was inspired by Street Art and my mothers Tarot cards she has out on the coffee table, "Tarot Art Nouveau" made by Lo Scarabeo. "All in the Cards" represents an 'either, or' of life: an upright card means unhealthy relationships, materialism, fear or being trapped and a reversed card means freedom from restraints, breaking from addictions, or divorce. So in a way, ones life is always "All in the Cards", it's good or bad all the time. |
Planning
Inspiration
My inspiration stemmed from the Street Artist Banksy, the "The Devil" Tarot card of my mother's Tarot deck, as well as the "The Devil" card from a more traditional deck. My family has always been into Tarot, energy reading, spirits, and things like this so we have lots of tarot decks, sage and crystals everywhere. This where most of my inspiration came from since its a big part of my life. I was really inspired by Banksy's, as well as some other street artist's, process of layering color, in Banksy's case with stencils, to create a more dynamic or meaningful piece. Because of this I carved two linoleum plates to print in layers. In lots of traditional tarot the "The Devil" card has a big sun for the background, and a depiction of the devil sitting in a throne, so I tried to use these elements in my piece. What drew me to Street Art, in particular Banksy was the layering and photo-like work, even when he uses stencils. The layering and contrast of color is what first draws ones eye and I really enjoy that aspect. |
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Planning Sketches
In this first planning sketch, I was thinking about the magical aspects of Cinderella at first. Then as I was sketching this I was trying to think of a way I would be able to make a statement. I ended up thinking about the “movie magic” of the Disney Cinderella film and that “movie magic” has been slowly fading away over the years. Today it's mostly CGI with no genuine film technique.
In my second sketch, the one I decided to use, I was obviously inspired by tarot cards. On the picture you can see that I wanted to do a gradient vertically, but later scrapped that idea because the carving was already going to be a lot of work without a gradient. The blue marker part on the body of the skeleton was where I was trying to figure out how I was going to carve the shadows because that's the only part I was doing shading like this. I also have notes all around the sketch planning out the layering and color selection. In this third planning sketch I was also being influenced by Tarot cards, but decided against it because it looked too much like my mother's "The Devil" tarot card (shown in inspiration section). I feel as though it would have been fun to do a block print like this, it would be a very blocky, heavily dark block print. |
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Process
Process
Since Banksy uses multiple layers of color and stencils to make a piece, I connected it to Block Print because I could also use multiple layers of color and use two different linoleum blocks to create about the same style. First, after I had picked the drawing I wanted to do from my planning sketches, I did a graphite transfer on both linoleum blocks, trying my hardest to keep them aligned the same. For the red colored block I only traced the sun and card-like details because I knew I only wanted these parts to be red. After I was done with my graphite transfer I started carving the linoleum. This part was harder than expected because I wasn't used to carving in general and the tools where a little hard to control. As you can see in the picture of the red underlay block halfway done, near the bottom half of it was me seeming to wildly carve, this was me just trying to get a feel of the carving tools. I used a small v-shaped tool for line work and details as well as two u-shaped ones of different sizes to carve the bigger sections of white. Because there is a lot of white space in my piece, carving both blocks took a pretty long time. After carving, I finally was able to start experimenting with actually printing my final piece. I started printing the red layers first with Dick Blick brand water-soluble red block printing ink. I rolled it on the linoleum block using the brayer, then placed the paper on top and used a baren to rub the paper on top the block. Then I carefully lift the paper up and analyze how I can make it better. I repeated this same process with the black layer but with Speedball brand water-soluble block print ink. |
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Experimentation
I started experimenting with just doing one full print of the card because I was going to do basically four prints on one paper for my final piece. I ended up experimenting with the red layer first because that layer is the base for everything. I knew it was going to be the easier layer of the two to get right because it isn't textured that much and is a simple design by itself. Once I got the level of red right I made lots of prints with about the same amount of ink so I could then experiment with the black layer. I did lots of these single card experimentations mainly because I didn't want to do the whole four prints but mess up on one and then half to start over. I then experimented with the black a few times to get a feel of how it would look as you can see in picture #1. After that I started overlaying the black on top of the many red prints. I quickly figured out that instead of putting the paper on top of the linoleum I would have to put the black linoleum block on top of the paper and then carefully flip the whole thing over in order to match up the red and black prints correctly. At first I couldn't get the prints to look the way I wanted it to though, so I did both layers at the same time because I thought it might look cool. So didn't wait for the red to dry before printing the black layer on top. What happened was the red came through the black layer for some reason; an example of this is in picture #4. I thought this effect looked really cool so I decided to go onto doing my four print final piece. |
(Click on pictures for larger viewing and Citations)
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Reflection
I'm very happy with how my final print turned out. There wasn't any major mishaps during experimentation and I made so many experimental prints so consequently, I will know how to do this in the future. I feel like the final print would have looked better on a bigger piece of paper, but doing it on the size I did looks great as well. Doing multiple rounds of prints was extremely helpful because it allowed me to improve and finely tweak how I was printing. Such as the area around the skeletons face, it was very hard to got the right amount of ink to where I could see the detail but have it also not be too grainy. I also feel as if I could've spent more time carving both parts and made them a little cleaner, or I could have used a different color ink other than red, or even possibly done more layering. This made me realize I need to think out my work more thoroughly instead of just doing it with a basic idea in mind.
Most of the information for inspiration came from background knowledge of Tarot and Street Art because i've been exposed to that since an early age. Although one new thing I did learn was how Banksy most likely does his murals, I had never knew that he used stencils. I can maybe make and use stencils in a future project! In addition, I feel like I should do some more in-depth research for my upcoming projects because I can sometimes get off topic. Doing this will also grow my ever-expanding knowledge of artists, processes, and art movements.
Most of the information for inspiration came from background knowledge of Tarot and Street Art because i've been exposed to that since an early age. Although one new thing I did learn was how Banksy most likely does his murals, I had never knew that he used stencils. I can maybe make and use stencils in a future project! In addition, I feel like I should do some more in-depth research for my upcoming projects because I can sometimes get off topic. Doing this will also grow my ever-expanding knowledge of artists, processes, and art movements.
ACT Responses
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork:
I was directly influenced by the style of "The Devil" tarot cards, as my Block Print literally looks like two Tarot cards. I was also influenced by Banksy's style with the stencil effects and the look of layers, and so I carved two separate linoleum blocks to create the red and black layering.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The art of Tarot is effected by the order of the cards as well as which way they face. All cards have a different meaning right side up than they do upside-down and this gave me the idea for the meaning of this piece.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
A conclusion I have come to during my research is that people always need or want direction, even from some little pieces of paper.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
My central theme around my research is spirituality, any form of it really because I don't want to come across a type of spirituality that I didn't know of before that really inspires me.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
An inference from my research is that people are always alright, or not alright, all the time; this is why one of the cards is upside-down. It sounds simple but I like the idea of an either/or culture.
I was directly influenced by the style of "The Devil" tarot cards, as my Block Print literally looks like two Tarot cards. I was also influenced by Banksy's style with the stencil effects and the look of layers, and so I carved two separate linoleum blocks to create the red and black layering.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The art of Tarot is effected by the order of the cards as well as which way they face. All cards have a different meaning right side up than they do upside-down and this gave me the idea for the meaning of this piece.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
A conclusion I have come to during my research is that people always need or want direction, even from some little pieces of paper.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
My central theme around my research is spirituality, any form of it really because I don't want to come across a type of spirituality that I didn't know of before that really inspires me.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
An inference from my research is that people are always alright, or not alright, all the time; this is why one of the cards is upside-down. It sounds simple but I like the idea of an either/or culture.
Bibliography
“Horse Rider – Banksy.” NBC News, 27 June 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/new-banksy-street-art-appears-across-paris-taking-aim-refugee-n886601
“The Queen – Banksy.” The Telegraph, 4 June 2012, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9310201/Banksy-draws-the-Queen-as-Ziggy-Stardust.html
“The Queen – Banksy.” The Telegraph, 4 June 2012, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9310201/Banksy-draws-the-Queen-as-Ziggy-Stardust.html