21/01/20
The last few weeks I’ve maintained a steady pace, working on finishing the four tester self-portraits and really pushing my understanding of the different processes in each portrait. There’s been quite a lot of distraction from other areas of my life so it’s been a bit stop start, but that’s never really going to change so I have to learn to work with it.
I was talking to one of the full-time students in the workshop last week and I realised how much I’ve changed in the way I approach my portraits and yet how much I still have to work on incorporating this new approach in the actual work. I’ll never start a portrait again without considering what I intent to achieve and why. That makes me feel so empowered and in control of what I produce.
I have been testing materials in my modest way and the results are below, I’m underwhelmed by silver ink on black paper and slightly less underwhelmed by the silver on grey. The inversion takes all the depth and darkness out of the portrait. The silver on grey is a little more mysterious and ambitious but not as striking as the original.
I etched this plate at home and feel pretty chuffed with the result. I’m finding that using the hard ground then going back into it with drypoint is a really satisfying process. I no longer consider that first dip to be the definitive image, it’s just the starting point of a potentially transformative journey.
Along side my self-portraits I’m slowly producing these small dark etchings on copper. These are more in line with the drawings I’ve been doing in my sketchbooks. I want to see if I can take the sketchbook work and translate it into print. It’s been more difficult that I’d anticipated, working so small and in so much detail is fine in a sketchbook, but completely different on a plate. I’m still trying to embrace the unexpected and let the plate guide me, a real challenge for a control freak.
The likeness has started to take second place, which is what I want, it’s about the light and dark, I want the viewer to be able to read in the face some sort of universal connection. Right now, the face could be made up, or a combination of people.
I still want to print a few portraits on top of one another, I did it with two tiny plates and it was unreadable and a jumble of clashing lines. But the larger portraits might be more interesting. I’ll try this in my studio next week. Tomorrow I’m printing a large A1 version of one of my selfies.
I don’t really know where I’m going with all of this work, I know I want to be more abject, more challenging in the self-portraits in particular. Drawing from life is so important, I don’t do it enough but I think I need to create photographic images to work from so I can compose more unusual compositions. After all it’s what I put into the lines, or draw out of the lines that counts.
Marigold Plunkett 