May 19, 2022

Drawn live at North Fourth Arts Center in Albuquerque.

PRINT

We made more prints on the Tortilla Press by Juliana Coles and Rich Hasler during the May 19th drawing session:

Juliana Coles printing on the Tortilla Press

Fred Yost brought in this 8x8 inch print, and we immediately hung it in the pop-up print show:

Fred Yost

Pop-up Print Exhibition

We had a mini-opening at the North 4th Art Center for both the Mexican pop-up prints (with Fred Yost's print), in the hallway next to the figure drawing studio; and the framed 8x8s on the opposite side of the building, from artists who attend the Thursday night drawing session. This was on May 19th, and we brought in aged cheddar cheese, crackers and a box of grapes to elevate the experience:

Pop-up exhibition of Mexican prints

Adrian Bastarrachea (Oaxaca)

Arturo Franco (Oaxaca)

Sam Gardner (Oaxaca)

Beatriz Rivas (Zaachila, Oaxaca)

Adrian Aguirre (Zaachila, Oaxaca)

Adrian Aguirre (Zaachila, Oaxaca)

Jose Luis Carrera Garza (Monterrey, Mexico)

Igor Galvez Buenfil (Monterrey, Mexico)

Ulises Vargas Moreno (Monterrey, Mexico)

Ulises Vargas Moreno (Monterrey, Mexico)

Fred Yost (Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA)

The Thursday night figure drawing artists

had a longer exhibition of prints

on the opposite side of the North 4th Art Center

VM Coffee layout

I also took the bucket to VM Coffee and laid out the Mexican prints for a quick table exhibition on May 20th:

• Masterpiece Motion -- rigging software using VR
• Adobe Substance 3D Modeler

May 17, 2022

The Tuesday Night drawing group of Santa Fe drew both in person and on Zoom at the new Argos Gallery/Studio location. They arranged a hybrid real/virtual drawing session because we are still coming out of Covid:

Deep Dream Generator

John Tollett drew live from the same session, while I drew on Zoom from the laptop.

PRINT

On May 18th, I experimented with the LaserPecker 2 by engraving my drawing into LINOLEUM.  I downloaded the first figure in this blog post and imported that into the LaserPecker 2 app, where I edited the image.  The debris/dots were more of an artifact of editing in the app. The app cropped the image and I engraved it 100mm high.  

Engraving with the LaserPecker 2

at Quelab

In only five minutes the laser engraver copied my drawing onto the linoleum, but the 10% depth might have engraved deeper than I wanted.  The idea is to hand carve the laser transferred image:

• Material "wood," Power "100%," Depth "10%," Pass "1," Time "5 minutes"

5 minute: OUTLINE

Image transferred in order to hand carve

The 30% Depth took over ten minutes to engrave, and the cuts were somewhat deep.  Maybe this would make a good intaglio print, or even a decent inverse relief print.

• Mode "pencil," Material "custom (wood)," Power "100%," Depth "30%," Pass "1," Time "10:20"

Ten minute: ~PRINTABLE

This might print

a reverse image

(white lines on black background)

The print from the above linocut

(made on May 19th)

I inverted the image in order to cut everything but the lines.  This took over an hour to cut, and the lines were too thin, and the engraving too shallow to make a decent print:

• Material "custom (wood)," Power "100%," Depth "30%," Pass "1," Time "65:12"

Hour: WORTHLESS

After I inverted the image,

the lines were too thin

and the cut was too shallow

to make a good relief print

I probably would have done better had I edited and cleaned up the image before importing it into the Laserpecker 2 app.  Also there must be a way to import a vector SVG file to make the cutting a lot faster.

Burning the image into PAPER wasn't so successful:

• Mode "pencil," Material "recycled paper," Power "100%," Depth "10%," Pass "1," Time "5"

I could probably burn a better image into paper

Note:  Choosing "Grey" did not work on the paper, though I didn't play around with the settings much

I am bringing prints down to El Paso

for the 8x8 print show

opening Friday, May 28th, 2022

• My NFT sold

• Yucca Records from Alamogordo (salute)
• El Paso Rock

May 15, 2022

Drawn at the Edith Bunker in Albuquerque:

Not nearly as good 

as a Henry Morales print

Inspired by Henry Morales, I carved directly from the model, without making a pencil sketch first:

I did not do as well as Henry Morales.

I made a regular drawing from the last two poses, adding some charcoal pencil:

Deep Dream Generator

During the Sunday Albuquerque Rail Yard market on May 15th, in front of the Quelab table, Ethan made a print using the Skateboard Press Robert made at Quelab, from a Mayan glyph Karl laser engraved into linoleum:

Ethan using the Skateboard Press

to make a print

The Print

which was laser engraved into linoleum --

it spells "Quelab" in Mayan glyphs

Maybe this image of Ethan would make a great logo for Skateboard Press printmaking, kind of like how Jerry West's contour was used for the NBA logo:

Remove BG

So I uploaded the above PNG file to the Laserpecker 2, choose "G Code" in the app, and cut out the sihouette in newsprint in less than half a mintue:

Cutting newsprint with G Code image:  Size "100 mm high," Material "recycled paper," Power "100%," Depth "10," Passes "3," Time "24 seconds:

Contour image

laser cut from newsprint

• More in depth explanation of the LaserPecker 2 portable laser engraver at the end of this May 10th blog posting.