Japanese landscapes: First of a triptych

As my year wound down in the printmaking class last year I realized that without any known large presses available in Nice,  I would probably give up intaglio printing.... at least for now.   

I decided to do one last series of what I came to call Japanese style prints.  There is perhaps nothing Japanese about them except the minimalism that I have come to associate with art from that country. 

Some of these I have cut with a small margin to make note cards and some of them got printed on larger paper....always BFK Rives .   The process involved acid etching and resin as I have explained in earlier posts. These are proofs of the first of three prints.re 

Japanese Prints: Second of a triptych

Artist's essay 1, marympayne 

This is a page of trial proofs for the last intaglio prints I was able to do with use of a print studio.  You can see the progression as I worked on the plaque to slightly change it each time. Sometimes the differences are only in the way it was inked . Sometimes the changes were made with a new layer of resin. 

  Unique proofs are always those that cannot be reproduced in quite the exact way as in when putting an additional backing paper on the plaque before printing in the method of "chine collé".  That method I explained in an earlier post. 

Artist's essay 2

Artist's essay 3

Unique print, "chine collé" artist's essay 4

Unique print, artist's essay 5, "chine collé"

Artist's essay 6

Artist's essay 7

Artist's essay 8

P.S.  The BFK Rives paper is all of the same cream color but  some of my photos are deceiving in their depiction of its color.

Girl with the Cat

During the period that I was doing copies in oils I came across this charming picture in the Louvre.  It was done by Louis Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) and depicts Gabrielle Arnault as a child. 

It was a very difficult painting for me and I found myself working with brushes with very few hairs in them just to adjust the color on the cheeks so that the child had that "baby" look.  I learned then  that I am an artist who prefers the large gesture. ...not tiny detail work.   The piece hung in my mother's house in Oregon until she died and now I have it with me.    I really love the cat and how uncomfortable he looks.  

Here is my copy of Girl with the Cat and the frame I chose.