Photography - Winter Woods

For digital art I chose to photograph the outdoors. I focused on things like light and texture in our snowy area. I was particularly interested in the view looking into the forest: the shadows and forms among the trees. I also captured some focused shots of things that may be common, but are beautiful. Sometime we forget to notice the details because we have walked the same trails many times, and seen similar woods in many other places. So walking out into the forest with the purpose of trying to see and notice, I may find unexpected things.

Fall in Woodcut

Trying to make sure I post all the artwork I haven't shown yet!

I had a lot of fun making a bunch of fall-themed woodcuts in printmaking last semester. I was inspired by the beautiful views hiking Katahdin, particularly the fade from warm red-oranges to yellow-greens of the leaves on all the birch trees. I mixed and matched the woodcuts to get a variety of prints. 

I would love to continue working with these blocks and make more prints!

Mt. Katahdin in Winter

Since the beginning of this semester I decided I wanted to do the Mt. Katahdin winter hike through  Maine Bound, the outdoor adventure center on campus which offers awesome trips!

 I would have done it no matter what, but fortunately four of my friends joined me, as well as 5 great people from Maine Bound ! It was quite cold and very challenging, but incredible! 

I loved every minute except for about 40 on the way back from the summit because there were some serious winds making the temperatures at least -20. The area is so beautiful!

The group outside the lean-to we spent the night in before the climb

Tyler and Wil hiking up Abol slide - crampons and ice axes were handy! And helmets!

Cold at the top, face frozen so I got windburn

Excited to make it! Didn't hang out long though

Ryan on the hike back down, the summit already looking distant

Skiing before the trip

Longboard

Most days I longboard to get around the UMaine campus. This summer I decided to decorate the bottom with markers, pen, and acrylic paint. Before doing this, I sanded the surface, and then afterwards put a clear finish back over. 

Relief Printing multi-color

The second linoleum relief print we made was done multi-colored in what is called the "suicide" style because you cannot fix a mistake (un-carve something) in the very particular process. In order to make sure we understood how to go about this our professor had us sketch each color layer on a sheet of tracing paper.

These are some prep sketches of for my idea. The theme of this assignment was ephemeral, so I was thinking about the way we consider time. We often consider rock as permanent, while in reality it weathers and crumbles, as did the Old Man of the Mountain. 

It all depends on the timeline being considered, there is no one way to define a short or long amount of time; So, I compared the life of a human compared to the lifespan of a cliff.

I made 8 prints trying out different color combinations. Each color is one layer of linoleum that I carved away after printing.

 

We had the option of waxing some of our prints if we chose, after the ink completely dries. 

This print is my favorite

I tried printing the purple shadows and green trees before the blue background was dry enough (it takes closer to 2 days to try between ink layers) so the ink of the sky lifted up a bit.

The second project in printmaking is relief printing. We had to do two linoleum carvings.

The first project we could only use black ink, and the purpose was to show a sense of light.

I chose to do an image of my sister Megan and I that had great lighting.

 I used carbon paper to transfer the outline of the areas I wanted to cut away onto the linoleum.
Our faces reminded me of two glowing moons in this early stage!

I did some more detail for a mix of marks and gradation on Megan's face. I used all little horizontal marks for her face.

I tried running the linoleum through the press a second time without applying more ink and I like the grey tone

More marks, I used all small vertical marks on myself

One of my final prints - I had a lot!

I waxed some of them... makes light go through them, although this paper is pretty thick. However you DON'T want to to keep this out in sun because the wax can melt 

I waxed this final print as well.. it is a thinner paper with threads