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Sansaii — myoplasmic
Published: 2008-02-15 16:28:17 +0000 UTC; Views: 1464; Favourites: 39; Downloads: 38
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Description
An experimental monotype. I really like the printmaking process. This was made by dripping mineral spirits and reductive wiping from the plate.I really had no conscious purpose or intent when making this... but I would be very interested to know how this is interpreted.
I'm not really all that educated in printmaking or monotype art, but I would very much appreciate thoughts and critique.
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Comments: 33
this is amazing. i am no artist, but when i first saw this, i thought of raw bone and skeletons. it almost creates two bodies, one more distinctive on the left with the side of the skull, and another next to it, both with their arms behind their backs. i immediately thought of a mass grave, not in bad or creepy way, but an artistically macabre scene.
its really wonderful! really!
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Thank you so much! I'm sorry this reply is so late, but I very much appreciate your input. I can definitely see where you're coming from on this. I don't often notice the other form, but a few people have mentioned it as well.
Thank you again!
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im working on some of those atm ,pretty cool stuff but im still pretty much in the dark with em, still can't achieve desirable effects
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The thing with this monotype is that I wasn't trying to acheive anything... it was pure experimentation- I have no idea what would have happened with this if I was trying to do anything with it. haha.
Thanks for the comment. Good luck, and let me know if I could possibly give you any information about the process.
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yeah my experience is simmilar, but now i have to do something more serious ;d did you use any solvent on this piece?
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ps- i did not read what others wrote.. i just assumed it was a holocaust piece.
so powerful! i really don't want others interpretations... it is great what ever the meaning
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I can't even begin to tell you how flattered I am. The quality of your work is so beyond my technical ability and so incredibly full of depth and emotion, that I wouldn't have thought anything I could yet produce would evoke anything similar in others, especially from an artist who's so skilled with these tools.
I greatly appreciate the comment- I very much admire your work, and to see something this positive from an artist you admire is really inspiring!
I wish I actually had more purpose with this originally- but I can see the imagery of holocaust... actually, more clearly than the suggestions from others.
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it isn't only technical skills, emotion has so much to do with it, and is perhaps the hardest thing to acquire... but you have that. technique can always be studied and mastered (and your technical skills are great too)... but you have the "art spirit", that is where it is at!!!. keep up the excellent work
steve
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this is one of the best things i have ever seen on dA, and maybe one of the best things i have seen in my life! this is a wonderful piece!
steve
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I'm a huge fan of printmaking, and monotype is definitely one of my favourites because of the amount of freedom you have - it's basically like painting. This is gorgeous, really, I love the textures a LOT. It's abstract, but very emotional and haunting. I see a shape of a human skeleton on the left looking up sadly at a cloaked shape to its right. Mm. Very nice print.
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Thank you so much for your view on this! I really appreciate the comments and thoughts.
I really enjoy printmaking as well, but have a hard time dealing with many of the solvents in the process. This monotype was made with oil-based inks and the texture was acheived with either reductive rubbing with a cloth or running mineral spirits over it.
I'm pretty satisfied with this as well, but I have no outside perspective to know if it's actually good or not, so I really really do appreciate your thoughts! Thank you for commenting!
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I've never used mineral spirits with oil based ink other than to clean it so I imagine it eats through it pretty quickly. I don't know what exactly the trouble you were having with solvents, but the ones I'm familiar with are an oil called 00 (double zero) and flash oil. The first of which will thin your inks up a little and make them translucent, and the second makes them really runny like watercolours and you can paint with them. Also if you splash it on the inks it can create blank spots with darker rings around them because of the oil.
The best thing to do with monotype is just play around with everything and see what you like. 
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oh, my issues with the solvents were sinus-based. I couldn't handle the fumes. Yeah, I was very vague in that, sorry.
I'm not going to do more monotypes, unless they're with water-based stuff. I was starting an example of it here:
[link]
I very much enjoy the process, but can't deal with oil solvents. I've done some acrylic-based silk-screen stuff that I LOVED working on, though, and hopefully will have more opportunity to work with soon
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Ahh, the fumes will get to you.
Silk screening is GREAT, it's so much fun but after having silk screened a good dozen shirts in a month's time last year I kind of hate the process because it's so time consuming, and a pain to do alone (partially because it's boring.)
That water-based monotype is gorgeous, by the way. It looks very painterly, and the black marks around it are kind of enticing and cloudy, they make it seem more dreamy.
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@-@ yeah, they certainly got to me.
Silk screening, actually, I think is one of the faster processes, though obviously not as fast as monotype, unless you count it in terms of production speed, rather than creation of individual images.
I created an entire screen in less than an hour, and whipped up 30 screens in about 2 weeks (maybe 2 hours a day). I mean, that was NOTHING compared to something like Lithography, which took me close to 3 weeks JUST TO PREPARE the stone, without even getting the chance to work on it (again, about 2 hours a day)...
The design I used for my silk screen is this one (though modified slightly):
[link]
What kind of tools did you have at your disposal in the facility you worked your screens?
Thank you for your re-assurance, but I was unsatisfied with it because I didn't know what else to do with it besides what's there, and then lost interest ;-; I agree with the black marks, although that was totally accidental! Those are left-over black ink marks from a previous use of the plate, which I tried to take care of, but it didn't work. I actually do like that aspect of it, though.
I'm really appreciating the critique! I will definitely return the favor if there's anything specific you want me to look at in your gallery? really!
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I just have a screen with emulsion fluid, emulsion remover, a squeegee, and inks for silkscreening, all of which I own and bought from the art store. I paint my designs in black ink, I make copies of them at a Kinko's on transparencies, burn the screen (which takes about an hour for me because I don't have any high wattage lamps, so I use a regular office lamp), and then I run the inks through. It takes a while, and since I don't wish to keep the screen with that particular design (seeing as a new one for every new design will cost me $15+ dollars), I have to clean it out with emulsion remover within the day I make the print, so I can not make them en masse without the tedious process of print-clean-print-clean-print-clean, etc.
At the school where I first printed they had the same supplies, basically, the only difference was a higher wattage bulb. I managed to do five prints in a night after burning the screen, that time, but I don't even do that at home.
And you're welcome for the crits, I love to give feedback where I can. And thank you for the offer, but I don't have anything specific I want critiqued in my gallery. I prefer critiques on WIPs since there's something I can do there, and all of the art in my gallery is finished... so while feedback and critiques are appreciated, there is nothing much I can do about specific things pointed out in critique.
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oooh yeah... cleaning the screen is a pain! I forgot about that... I guess it was just worth it for me because I needed to make so many prints in such short time, that I was just happy to have been able to print them as fast as I did.
I imagine it would be really difficult to expose the emulsion the right way without the right tools, which is why I asked. It's harder because if you underprocess it, then it'll just wash right out, and if it's overprocessed, then the areas that need to be removed are stuck on as well (unless the areas that are meant to be blocked out are -really- opaque). So it's understandable.
I'll go back and look at some of your works to give feedback sometime. I'm really loving your watercolor techniques, especially.
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Yeah, I might invest in a few more screens in the future for the sake of having stuff I can print over and over and over without worry, but for now I'll just have the temporary ones.
And thanks! My watercolours are some of my favourite pieces, I think it's my favourite medium too, and has been for a while...
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the walls are melting maan.
X]
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I definitely saw the skeletons
the one on my far left is the shorter/younger one who appears to be wearing a coat. You can visibly see what looks like a skull for his head. Next to him is what I guess everyone is calling the "father." his head is out of the shot but he seems to be wearing a long sleeved dress shirt and black pants, and actually right next to him on my right I see what looks a lot like Jack Skellington only his head is kinda blurred out of focus...
however
upon first glance
I thought this was a cave, with stalagmites and stalactites and such
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I like caves
long sleeved dress shirt? hmm... well, I can sort of see that. Fwitchter was able to covey that pretty well too.
Hahaha! With Jack Skellington, you mean the very faint shape in the more "solid" darker area in the upper right? That's so cool! Haha, I would have never noticed that. I'm gonna find the original image and try to take a better closeup of that area just to see if I could get a better view of that. I would have never see that, thanks for pointing it out XD
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if you want maybe I can save the image then circle the figures in photoshop to point out what I see, lol
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I see the Jack Skellington, which is really funny, haha. Everything else is kinda ambiguous I can see the shapes that would form the "father" and "son" figures, but I guess the fater is just hard for me to grasp completely.
If you want you could do that 
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Oh, hard to describe 
So, in the left, there is the son. In the left, top corner there is it's head, then you can see the neck and torso, his legs are dark.
On his right shoulder you can see the fathers arm, leening on the son. But the father hasn't got a head (it's over the picture margin).
If you would like to, I can show you via paint, but I need your permission to do that (then I can encircle the body-parts) and I need your e-mail
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Ah! I see it now! That's really neat, that's a very nice view.
Thank you for taking the time to describe this (you don't have to point it out, I can see it clearly now). Thank you in general for your comments as well.
It's really interesting to know how people see something that's abstract... especially since I wasn't thinking about anything in specific when I made this. I think of all the theories, I like yours the best:
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When I see it, it's like a father holding his hands on his son, who looks up to him.
But I like it, very well done. Quite new and expressive mood.
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Oh wow! That's a really interesting take. I would love to hear more of where you see these figures. That's a really nice view. It takes away from the dreariness that I see as the result of this (and some other people too).
Thank you very much. This is a great perspective
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When I first see this, I see a skeleton... hmm. The mood is a bit sad, is what I feel. Overall though I was stunned when I first saw it in the recent deviations, it really caught my attention.
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I really appreciate this comment. Pretty insightful... I think I see a person too, not sure if I see a skeleton, but that's a very interesting view. I have to agree with you on the mood of this. I think that's the nature of the materials and chemicals I used, haha.
Thank you again for this comment
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It's actually quite beautiful, like an abstract painting.
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Thank you. It's meant to be more abstract. Actually, now that I think about it, it's almost like a Rorschach Test. lol, I even used ink to make it.
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