Almost the end...

The end of the semester is almost here *tear* and I still have a lot I want to get done, as always; finishing up new things and revisiting prints I was working on earlier in the semester and never got around to completing because I have a hundred things going at once all the time. They'll get there eventually, I'm sure. Here's a little bit of what I've been working on lately...

The Skeleton Monoprints

These have been so much fun, and I'm absolutely intent on making more of them. I found a glow in the dark rubber skeleton dude hanging around in the printshop and twisted him into contorted positions, then rolled up black ink on plexiglass and drew in the figure by wiping ink away with Q-tips. Nice, quick little studies. On the last two, I started playing around with adding red ink to the plexi after I pulled the print the first time and running it through the press again-I like that because it looks even creepier that way...

"Inhaling Depleted Uranium"-line etch, aquatint, subtractive method, monotype

I posted this one before in just black and white; this time I wiped the plate with black and rolled a really oiled down green over it. I was going for a radioactive look to go with the content, and am happy with the results. I got the idea for this when I was doing a bit of research on the environmental impact of the war in Iraq. There are currently over 4 million tons of depleted uranium in Iraq from the weapons used in the war. Depleted uranium is bad news-and it never goes away. I read that if you inhale just a tiny bit of it (which I'm sure millions of people have done), it's like getting an X-ray once an hour for the rest of your life, and it stays in your body until...well, until your body ceases to exist. And then it goes into the earth. The stupidity of the human race never ceases to astound me.

I posted this one earlier as well, but just tried it in reverse this time, doing the heart/heads plate in red and orange and the guitarists in black. I can't decide if I like it yet or not, since the line drawing isn't really all that clear in red. But then again, the guitarists aren't super clear when they're in red. Maybe I'll try it again with ink that's a little thicker and see what happens. Either way, I still really like this image.