BIG PRINTS!

Tuesday, we finally finished carving the 4 ft by 8 ft woodblocks, and spent the entire day printing them outside.

It was really tiring and lots of physical work, but the weather was gorgeous and the team work was a great experience overall. :)

The process: Put the large block on a table, and ink it VERY WELL (no dry  spots) with a large brayer. Then, take the block, put it on the ground, inked side  facing up. Take a large piece of muslin, or any type of ink absorbing fabric, and stretch each corner tight, so the fabric lies on top of the block with no wrikles. (requires four people for each corner) Layer another sheet of thicker, soft fabric to allow some distribution of pressure. Then the steam roller goes over the block three or four times back and forth. You take off the top layer of thick fabric, and bring the block with the muslin still on top to a pressing table. Then you press the fabric into the block with a spoon or a presser, so that all of the ink is absorbed. (This takes lots of time and energy) Finally, check the corner of the fabric, lift it a little bit and see if  you like how the ink looks, then lift the fabric up from the block carefully and hang it somewhere to dry!

I was able to get three prints done throughout the whole day, and none of them is perfect; so I am planning on printing by hand which you basically do by doing the pressing part all by hand. I’ll do that during the summer when I’ll have lots of free time. I came home with black oil ink all over me legs, my hands, and my shirt, and I passed out on my bed. My hand’s still a bit swollen from the carving, and I”m sore all over, but I can’t wait to get a better print :)))

inking

pressing with a steam roller

pressing by hand

waiting for a second run

Dennis (brown shirt) is in charge of the whole event.

our driver, sitting in the sun all day

lots of kick-ass prints

eyebrows

Heroes is about the only thing I’m watching these days…

and whenever Sylar comes on screen, it always strikes me how big his eyebrows are. They look so…so…Sharpie-ish…Here’s a comparison photo I just googled:

left, Sylar character/ right, the actor Zachary Quinto

Okay, the actor does have big eyeborws, but I think they draw a little extra eyebrows to make him look psychotic. You know what, it does make him look psychotic; it’s groomed and plucked to such precision that you think he probably spends an hour everynight drawing his eyebrows with a permanet marker. All of that asides, I can’t wait until he dumps Danko.

what I’m reading…

This was my find from a random walk into a Shakesphere & Co. bookstore near NYU. There are some parts in the middle where it gets a bit more mathematical, but it’s all explained and very manageable. You really feel the amount of joy the author gets from doing what he does. There’s an interesting part in the beginning about bees and flowers, and how bees are visually attracted to symmetry. The parts about Galois’s life are also memorable. I’m almost at the end, but I think I’m going to re-read some chapters. I fuzzled through some of the parts about permutations and combinations, because I don’t like permutations and combinations. I really love these type of books that relate math & science with aethetics and visual perception. A similar book that might be a bit more relative to artsies might be: Math and the Mona Lisa by Bulent Atalay. This is the book that I was really into last summer

I also borrowed three more books on the number theory, the group theory and symmetry from the library just today. I love the Pratt library :)

back home

from the print studio!

in-progress image:

actually this is a picture from…..umm Monday night I think?

I did more Tuesday & today from..7pm to 3am, so I finished all of the area that’s inside my scribbly pink line (in the photo) I’m been spending at least a good 6~8 hours every other day on this, but it’s still so slow…:( I’m afraid the rest of it will take me all of my weekend. Glad the print date is delayed until next Tuesday.

If anyone is lurking around Pratt campus on Tuesday (4/28), we’re printing big prints outside the Pratt Studios building with a steam roller from 3pm to 5pm! Come see lots of really great prints~

picture of our studio & m&m’s :

orange is my least favorite color of m&ms…they need to do a better job distributing different colors in a single bag.

chomp chomp

closed :(

open :)

Something I did for my drawing class. The display part is the right side, the triangle. I read something about the separability of congruent geometric shapes in this awesome book I borrowed from the library called, ‘Unsolved Problems in Geometry.’ That, above, is a special triangle of three congruent parts that can only separate when each part are pulled simultaneously. So…I made a machine that does that for you. There’s a motor, five gears, some screws, sticks and stones, etc. You can kinda see the mechanism in the photo, but barely. It’s reaaally flimsy, but it makes a nice screeching noise, hah. Then there’s a drawing of three sculls on top to make it look like it’s eating something….chomp chomp.

I’m thinking of implementing similar geometric puzzles for the Robotics class final project. It would definitely have to be more sturdy. (made out of wood…not foam board, silly)

OH! One more awesome thing I learned this week. How to use the 3-D printer! It prints plastics! I heard there were couple in the school, but didn’t know it was right next to one of my classes. There’s also a 3-D scanner! Okay, it’s a bit expensive, and time-consuming, but….It’s a freakin 3-d printer. Enough said.

I actually made a rubber mold of a single plastic gear I found in a printer and casted copies of it in hydrocal plaster for the project in the picture above. Now that I’ve been imformed of the 3-D printer, I feel like a dumbass. I could’ve printed those gears. They would’ve been so much neater and precise. I really want to crush those plaster gears; they’ve been nothing but trouble. I also found out that there’s a website where you can order custom gears.

Life Drawing

some figure drawings I did this spring.

*EVENT ALERT* This Friday, April, 17th. There is a DRAWATHON at the Pratt Institute! Basically, there are rooms of nude models posing for various time intervals, and you can choose which ever spot to sit and draw for how ever long as you want. It’s from…6PM to 6AM next morning I believe? $10 for students who register early $15 for regular entrance. Oh, free pizza if you get there early. @Pratt Institute, Main building, 4th floor.

attempt to do facial features

backs are so much fun.

This model reminded me of that actress from the Tom Hanks movie where he becomes an adult then shrinks back. I remeber being really freaked out by that wish-granting doll/machine/evil-robot thing.

buttocks!

I think my better drawings come from my freshman year drawing class. Mr.Webb was such an awesome professor. Plus, you had 6 hours per class. I think the 3 hour you get for all the sophomore classes are a bit too short. This Friday, I’m gonna go to the drawathon and develop permanent dark circles! hoorah!

herro

…where have I been for a month? let’s see…California for a week, then pain-ville for the next three weeks. Yes. Pain-ville. But exciting nevertheless. I have this huge (huge as in…won’t fit through my apartment door, huge) woodblock that I’ve been sketching & carving for the last three weeks. It has to be done by next Tuesday, and it takes me approximately 8~10 hours to carve about 1 square foot. So…I’ll be in the print studio for the entire weekend I guess. Will definately take pictures of it.

Last weekend, met my mom, my brother, lost my wallet in a cab, cab driver found me on facebook, saw the Picasso show at the Gagosian in Chelsea, blah blah blah…

yup. That’s what I did for four weeks. One week of amazing weather in California, followed by three weeks of shitty weather in Brooklyn. Just got back from carving some more of that woodblock, and I think I can hear my elbows creaking. Now to upload those drawing photos I took yesterday…