"I wonder if I can find a good burger around here."

I was asked somewhat last-minute to take part in a print exchange between students of Ohio State and USU. The theme was "Wanderlust," which is a word that makes me somewhat uncomfortable. You could use any media and the (final) paper size was 11x11. Mine is 6 colors printed in 4 runs on machine-made Mulberry. You'll notice that it's a portrait like 99% of my other prints. This time was the smallest face I've ever done and I'm happy with the addition of an environment. Doing this made me wish that I had more time to spend in the print studio. It also made me question whether I'll ever finish a print that I don't wish I had done something different with. I'm generally 90% satisfied but there are always little things here and there that I wish I could change but by that point I've generally carved 2-4 blocks for the print and can't see how carving one more would actually help it. Anywho, hope you like it.

"Steve Zissou's a sell-out."

Remember back in June when I posted a picture of a block I was working on? Well, I finally finished printing it on Friday. Why did it take so long, you ask? Turns out employment muscles its way into time that could otherwise be spent in the print studio. That, and I ended up laying down 2 more colors than I had originally planned, which also included carving a 3rd block to get the finally print how I wanted it. Anywho, it's a multiple-block suicide, 10 colors printed on machine made Mulberry. The final paper size is 12.5x16.5" with an edition of 25. Later on I'll post some of the process photos because I always think it's interesting to see what goes into the final piece.

Now, if you want to pick up one of these little suckers, they will be available this Thursday and Friday at the annual USU Print Sale along with whatever other prints I can find floating around in my drawer here at home. Most of mine will probably be in the 40-60 dollar range, so bring your checkbook and support a good cause (me).

Jonas Bergstrand.

I can't get enough of his work lately. Check out his website. I love the juxtaposition of the 1950's style illustration and the photography. Plus his sense of humor comes through, which is great. And if anyone wants to get me a print of this for Christmas here's a link, I'm sure I've got an anonymous rich uncle out there that wants to add to my art collection since I can't afford to do it myself.

The ark project.

Dear friends,

Lately I've been incredibly bored with the internet. I feel like I'm going to the same sites and seeing all the same things and for some reason can't come across anything fresh. One ray of sunshine into this desert of boredom is the ark project. I stumbled across it earlier this week and wished I had heard about it with enough time to submit something. I have a weakness for illustration... compilations? The only other word I can think of is annuals, but that doesn't work. Someday I'll get those Gestalten Illusive books (1, 2 & 3) off my wishlist and now I find that I've got to add another book to that wishlist. The book contains submissions from illustrators across the world of animals indigenous to where they live, so you end up with a book full of what must be at least one of every kind of animal. Now, while the website doesn't feature any pictures aside from the book cover, it does have a list of all the participating illustrators with links to their individual websites. I can't guarantee all of them will be golden, but there will be enough jewels in there to make it worth your while, including one of my all-time favorite illustrators, Mads Berg.

Heist music.

A couple weeks ago Oceans 12 was on tv. I was a big fan of the first one and when 12 came out in theaters I went opening night, then promptly decided to never watch it again. It was bad. Julia Roberts playing a character who just happens to look like Julia Roberts? I guess they didn't realize that Brad Pitt looks like Brad Pitt, not to mention George Clooney, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and Bernie Mac. Now, I was pretty resolute in my decision, but I had some friends tell me that it was a lot better the second time around. That didn't convince me to ever rent it but when it was on tv I thought that maybe I'd give it a second chance and after having watched it for the second time I now know that it is still just as bad as before and I really don't ever have to watch it again, but I didn't leave the movie empty-handed. While the movie seemed like nothing more than an excuse for these celebrities to make a couple bucks off us, the soundtrack was great. I immediately went to my computer and added the soundtracks to my already extensive Amazon Wish List. And then I came across Brian Gossett.

Those of you who know me well know how I'm a sucker for anything free. You know all those commercials that tell you to go to such-and-such a website for a free granola bar/stick of gum/individual box of cereal? I do all of them. Every one. iTunes free single of the week? I download all of them with very few exceptions. I don't know how many times I hear about a group from a friend, go home and find out that a month earlier I downloaded one of their songs--for free. Months ago I found out that Urban Outfitters periodically releases downloadable compilations with their project LSTN. So far there are six. Then very recently I found out that Amazon does a new free single every day (today's is great. It's Sondre Lerche who scored Dan in Real Life. Just check out Amazon's MP3 Downloads section).

A couple days after watching Ocean's 12 I saw some of Brian Gossett's compilation album covers on ffffound and, following the link, came to his website where I found out you could download the albums--for free. He's done 20 of them, each with beautifully designed album covers and each inspired by heist movies, the people who scored them, and exotic locations (Detroit's exotic, right?). Quite a few include David Holmes who did the scores for the Oceans movies and I'd also check out any of the Shawn Lee comps. Anywho, ever since then I've been listening to the music pretty much nonstop, wanting to drink (virgin) martinis and cruise around European mountain paths in an old Aston Martin. Can you blame me?

I never thought I'd see the day.

An In-N-Out in Orem? Is anyone else worried that this will make the chain less "special?" Pretty much every year my dad takes our family to Disneyland for a week and while we're there we go to In-N-Out every day. Now, I wouldn't normally go there every day but I know that this has to last me for a whole year until we go down again. But now are we to get rid of that blessed tradition, now that I'll be able to pick up a Double-Double Animal Style every time I'm in happy valley?

It's for moments like these that you go to the parade in happy valley.

Now fighting even more dangerous enemies...

This is not real.

You have most likely seen some pictures of items from this fictional Wes Anderson film festival, they were making the rounds on most of those bookmarking sites we all frequent so much. The work was done by Alex Cornell, a SanFran based graphic designer who did this incredible project as part of his graduate studies. What really impressed me was the scope of the project. DVDs, posters, billboards, a trailer and so much more all had to fit the identity system he created for the festival and were all done so well that, according to this blog post, he received more than one email from confused fans wondering where to sign up for this film festival. I can't say that I don't wish that it were a real thing too though.

Proof.

It's been a while since I've posted anything so I thought I'd show one of the things I'm currently working on. Here's proof that I'm alive and I'm still doing some printmaking even after graduation. I'm exactly half-way through this print. I've got 4 colors done and 4 more to go. I've got my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get into the studio tomorrow to lay down one more.

Takach brayer.

For quite some time I've been worried about post-graduation printmaking. It's something that I love to do and yet, with the exception of some woodcarving tools, I don't have any of the tools and materials to do any of it. I've been pretty content to use the school's supplies, complaining the whole time when another student wouldn't take care of or clean the community supplies. Having now graduated I find myself in a bit of a pickle. But thanks to my amazing in-laws, I am now one step closer to home-printmaking. As a graduation present they pulled out all the stops and bought me a brayer. Not just any brayer but the queen-mother of all brayers, a 4-inch Takach Brayer. I can't find the words to express how excited I am about this. Now I just need to sell a couple prints so I can buy some ink and paper and figure out how to hand-print so I can take advantage of said brayer.

"Capital G Potatoes"

I just finished this print last night and thought I might go through the start-to-finish with you. It all starts out with an idea in my sketchbook. In this case you're getting something special because you get my idea and also some vegetables that I drew and some weird squid-thing (does anybody else look back in their sketchbook and wonder what their train of thought was at the time?). You'll notice that the mushroom has a mean face, that's because mushrooms are mean. I don't like them. I'm pretty obsessive-compulsive about the whole process and from the beginning I figure out composition and at least the ballpark where my colors will play. I figured out that I was going to carve two blocks and what would come from each of the blocks and then I started carving.

First thing I did was put the brown in the background of the portrait. I added some vertical lines to break it up a little bit and kept the brown pretty transparent so it wouldn't be too overpowering but help separate it just a little bit from the wallpaper. Then I laid down the light gold color that would end up as highlights in the frame and the lighter color in the pattern. The pattern was heavily inspired by a pattern I saw on a poster in Switzerland last summer.

From there I cut out a stencil that would cover the frame so I could finish the wallpaper and not get any green on the frame. After the two greens were run all I had left with that block was the darker gold color in the frame.

Now, one thing I've learned about registration: when working with multiple blocks it's generally easier to wait until you're finished carving the one block, trace the image from the actual print and then transfer what you need on to the second block. When I haven't done this I've noticed that quite often things tend to shift a little bit during the carving and then you end up with areas that don't register as nicely as you may want.

My original plan was that the second block would only be the grey, used for shadows and as fill for the fur, and the black linework which would (hopefully) pull everything together. But after printing a couple with everything black (including the linework around the frame), my teacher, Kathy Puzey, suggested that I do a darker brown on the frame because it was too harsh a contrast with the warmer colors that were in the frame and were taking away from the portrait itself. And so one last color quickly became two, but in the end I think it turned out quite nice.

And here it is. A print of a portrait of my cat, Capital G:

Graduation and a lot of other people's work.

I guess this means I graduated. Now what, you ask? That's a valid question. Find a job, that's as far as I've gotten. My website is now up. Go to woodandpixels.com. I've got a list of things that I've got to do in the next little while to get it all finished up but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

Yesterday being the lazy Sunday it was I decided to go through some of my stuff. I pulled out a bunch of the work I have that isn't framed and laid it out to see how much room it would take up when it's not stacked on top of itself. My goal is to someday hang all of it salon-style in my house. The sad thing about this is that there are still quite a few of my friends that I don't have any of their work and need to get some. That, and I need to convince Nicki to mount my deer like she did her own for the BFA show.

Here are all the prints from the last print exchange I took part in. We teamed up with Montana State University and had theme "What would a woodcut cut if a woodcut could cut wood?" or something along those lines. I apologize for the crappiness of the picture but if you look closely you should be able to see that there are a few in there that are pretty freaking good.

I really don't like this layout. I like the pictures left-aligned but I also don't want the text to wrap around it. I guess this will have to do until I get a new blog done with Wordpress.

Herakut: the perfect merge.

A couple years back I found the book Graffiti Women for sale on Amazon and picked it up. Through it I was introduced to the work of Hera and immediately started searching the internet for more of her work. I found out that she was part of a two-person team with another graffiti artist named Akut and they did the whole Hollywood couple thing and smashed their names together creating HERAKUT. Since then I have periodically checked out their website and myspace page to continuously be blown away by the work they were doing. Their work combines this spontaneous, sketchy style with photorealistc portraiture and it's basically all done with a spraycan. About a month ago I checked their homepage and found an announcement for a book they were releasing in April. I did some more searching on the internet and found a couple sample pages and decided that I needed to get this book. Starting April 1st my daily routine was: wake up, take Whit to work, check my email, check Amazon to see if it had been released yet, start doing school work. As more time passed I found myself becoming increasingly antsy which is weird, I'm usually a perfect model of self-control (ask Whit) and kept searching for more and more about the book. I found one website that posted about a dozen pages and it was like heroine (so I'm told), I was wired. I kept worrying that I was just building myself up to be disappointed and the more time passed, the surer I got that it couldn't possibly live up to what I was expecting. But I couldn't help myself (again, heroine), and finally about a week ago I found that Amazon finally had it for sale. I ordered it and waited patiently, until it came today. The UPS guy rang the doorbell, I tore open my package and was awe-struck at how much better the book was than my already inflated expectations. I can't stop looking at it. And it makes me want to pull another all-nighter in the printmaking studio, which isn't good since I have a website due in 3 days.

Long story short, I give it two very enthusiastic thumbs up.

BFA show.

Anyone who wants to come see the work of the Utah State graduating art majors come this Friday. This does not include the Graphic Design emphasis which will have a presentation Tuesday, April 28th. I'll put the poster up as soon as I can get a link to it.

How much wood could a woodcut cut if a woodcut...

This morning I finished my print for an exchange we are doing with some school in Montana. The theme was "How much wood could a woodcut cut if a woodcut could cut wood?" I took a picture of my most lumberjack looking friend, Jackson, and made him into a kind of Urban Lumberjack. In fact, I think that's going to be the name of the print: "Urban Lumberjack." It has a nice ring to it. I had toyed with the idea of doing the mash-up and calling it "Lumber Jackson," but I don't think I will.

Sometimes I forget how nice it is to work small. These prints were only 8x8" and they were ultra-quick to ink up.

The ting tings.

I forgot just how much I like this band until I saw them live. For those of you that aren't familiar with them, you've heard their stuff before: 1st their song "Shut Up and Let Me Go" was on the iPod commercial, and shortly thereafter the song "Great DJ" was one of the iTunes "free downloads of the week." Anywho, it's just the two of them that make the music and it's incredibly entertaining to watch it happen. They had two roadies that would dash on and off stage to switch out their instruments so that they could play seamlessly. After each song Katie White would just stand there and stare out into the crowd half fashion-model, half dear-in-headlights. She kept talking about how great the crowd was and the level of energy but I swear I never saw her smile once. The best part of it all: Thanks to my amazing wife and KSL.com, the whole night only put us out 20 bucks.

An explanation of "Chicago"

I don't know how blogger works. I really wanted to put words at the bottom of that post full of pictures but I couldn't figure out how to get my cursor down there, so here are the words that would have gone there. Use your imagination.

After being back from Chicago for a week and not having time to post anything I finally decided to put up some pictures from my trip, not that I really have time now but here I am anyway. Last week was the Southern Graphics Council annual printmaking conference. We spent most of our time in demos or galleries but made time to see the bean, go to H&M and we didn't see Batman, which was one of my goals going into it.

And here's another picture that I couldn't get to work with the layout of that last post. That whole portrait/landscape thing.

Chicago.

Procrastination is an art major's best friend.

I've got quite a bit to do today and so of course I'm procrastinating and writing a post on my blog instead of being responsible and working. I finally finished my print of the banjo player that came onto our train in Switzerland. It was my first real foray into the world of color woodblocks and I learned a lot from it. One thing we ended up having to do in this print was use a dark brown instead of black. It still reads about the same with the added exception of some warmth. The black was too stark and cold and just didn't flow well with the other colors.

Today I looked out my window and saw this doll that somehow made its way onto our roof. Naturally I grabbed my camera, crawled out the window and took some pictures. Truth be told it kind of gives me the creeps. Why is that? If instead some little girl were playing with it I wouldn't give it a second thought but since it's on my roof I can't help but think that it crawls over to my window in the middle of the night with homicidal thoughts and watches me sleep, just biding its time for the perfect opportunity. Well, it seems to me that said opportunity was today, when I walked out on the roof without a safety harness. It could have waited until my back was turned and given me a little push towards the edge. Matt: 1, Creepy Doll: 0. Better luck next time.

I may have gotten a little carried away with that last paragraph. But here are some pictures:





































I also learned today from Scott Hansen's blog that one of my favorite bands The Whitest Boy Alive has recently released a new album. Scott has a single on his website you can listen to (I already have 4 times) or you can download the album in its entirety on iTunes now, or wait until the 30th when it will be released on cd.

And the winner is...

Thanks to everyone who gave input, but the polls are now closed. I decided to go with woodandpixels.com. It has a certain feel to it that continues to grow on me. Don't bother going there, it will be a while yet before I can get something put together. As soon as I do I'll post a link so you can all check out the showcase of my work.

A contest for people who like my prints.

I've been in the process of trying to find a domain name for my yet-to-be-designed website and I'm having a bit of trouble. Turns out that Matt Nelson isn't altogether a unique name and pretty much every variation of that theme has been taken. I had toyed with the idea of matthasnarcissistictendencies.com, but I really have a hard time spelling "narcissistic" and so it's probably a lot to ask of anybody else, though I feel it is somewhat memorable. Then I though that I could just shorten it to the more user-friendly "n.t.," as in matthasnt.com, but then it reads Matt hasn't. Matt hasn't what? And I don't want people going into the experience of my website with that negative conotation. I've toyed with a number of other ideas, most of which are completely unoriginal, which probably speaks volumes about who I am and the level of my creativity.

And so I am opening it up to you, whoever might read this, to give me any suggestions you may have to help me out. Knowing that people like winning prizes (at least I do so I assume that other people do too), if I pick your idea, or even if your idea inspires me to do something else I will reward you with a print (of mine) of your choice. That's a 30-100 dollar value. You can't put a price on that.

So here comes the fine print:
1. My website will showcase (that's a nice word) my portfolio of both printmaking and graphic design work so the name needs to either incorporate or ignore both of these aspects. 2. Jurying these ideas will be done entirely by me in what I will assure you is a completely unbaised manner. 3. Please don't be offended if I don't choose yours, it doesn't mean I don't like you or think you're great. It just means I don't like your idea. 4. All entries must be in by 11:59pm mst on Thursday, March 5, 2009. 5. I have a "plan b" in case I don't decide to go with anybody else's idea, I'm just not completely sold on my own idea.

Game on!

Warehouse show.

Last night was the annual student warehouse show. This year it was a combination of artwork and music where the entry fee and 20% of all artwork sold went to help out the wife of this guy that died unexpectedly. Congratulations to by best friend for taking "Best in Show" for the above piece. She's so talented.













Ryan Gregson played and did an amazing job, even if much of it was the guitar-equivalent of lip-syncing.













One of the highlights of the night was seeing my Graphic Interface professor play the keyboard with his band, Resistor Radio. They were LOUD. Before they started a bulk box of earplugs made their way through the crowd.













And these guys actually put on a really good show. They're called Battle School and as near as I can tell the guy on the left side of the stage was up there only to control all the lights, but it really added to the performance.

Hair.

Announcement:
Due to all the self-esteem building comments about my hair last week, I have now cut it all off.

For people who notice hair-growth.

Last Thursday and Friday was our first-annual printmaking Tshirt sale. $10=1 tshirt. Overall I think we did pretty well, though I don't know the final numbers. Our number one seller was the shirt on the manikin that says "keep your love to yourself." Mine is on the edge of the picture in red. Maybe later I'll post another picture of it. In the mean time here's something else for you to enjoy:



















I thought I looked pretty emo in this picture, but I've heard that I look like a lesbian. If you want more check out Whit's blog.

P.S. I'm sure all of you have heard about In-N-Out coming to 12195 South Factory Outlet Drive in Draper. That is the Draper in Utah, yes. In celebration I wore my In-N-Out shirt in the picture above, as I'm sure you could tell....

banjo

Here's about halfway through my current woodcut. On top of this will be two values of brown in the hat, hair and banjo. Then on a separate block I will carve black line work that will (hopefully) pull it all together.

free music video of the week.

I've got a huge project due and so naturally I'm not working on it at all and instead opted to work on printmaking. I've got a picture of my current work-in-progress that I'll post later but I have no way to get it from my camera on to my computer to post it right now.

If anyone hasn't downloaded the Music Video of the Week from iTunes this week you should. I enjoyed and there's a good chance you might too. The artist is called Metronomy and the song is "A Thing For Me."

photogravure

A little about photogravure. It's like the unwanted lovechild of photo and printmaking. I say unwanted because most of the photo people I have talked to say it's more of a printmaking process while the printmakers claim the opposite. Nothing like nobody wanting you for Christmas.

That said, it's a great process. The jist of it is that you take a photo like the one above, make a transparency out of it and through a series of tedious steps etch it onto a copper plate then print said plate Intaglio-style. My result wasn't as good as some of the others and I don't feel like it's done. Aside from lacking a whole lot of contrast I'd like to try some multiple-plate stuff and maybe add some color just to see what happens. I'll post the results as they come.

happy accidents

Last weekend I took part in a workshop on Photogravure (I'll explain in a later post) and had a lot of down time so I started scanning in some of my photos from the blackbird, fly. Here is an example of how amazing the Sam's Club technicians are, though I think this one is something of a happy accident. Notice how the picture changes half way through? Two of the 16 pictures I got back were like that and about 6 more had a small strip at either the top or bottom of the photo.

I was only able to get one negative strip scanned but I'll try to finish up the rest later this week, along with posting an image of my photogravure print.

jazz game

Here is a great picture of my mom after the Jazz game we went to last week. You'll notice the logo on her jacket is an RW for Rocawear, which I believe, and confirmed on Wikipedia, is the clothing line started by Jay Z. If you know my mom you should realize just how out of place this is. Apparently sometime in the past couple years that I've lived away from home she got some street credit and is now representing it.

bbf

I've developed my first roll of film from the blackbird, fly but it'll be a little bit before I can get them scanned. My conversation with the "technician" when I was dropping the roll off:

Me: The film has been exposed over the sprocket holes too, is that going to be a problem?
Them: Probably. We don't have photoshop.
Me: ...? I don't follow.
Them: ...We can only print what's in between the sprockets.
Me: Ok, just do that. It'll at least give me an idea of what's on there.
Them: We could just process the film.
Me: No, I want prints.
Them: Are you sure? Then you could just scan them in.
Me: I'll do that anyways, but I want prints. And can I get them printed with a border?
Them: No... well, yes.

Needless to say I was pretty surprised to find that when I got the prints the "technician" had taken some "artistic liberties" and printed most of them with a bar of the next shot on one side of the print. Most of them were pretty small bars but two prints came back with it split right down the middle. I actually really like the way those two turned out.

I hope that all made sense. I've found out in the past couple years what a horrible explainer I am.

moosen

This is probably my favorite picture of Whit and I ever. I just found it again.

blackbird, fly and new year's weekend.

Well, I hope everyone had an enjoyable New Year. I did. I figure any New Years adventure that involves cops showing up has to be good, right? No, it wasn't anything alcohol or nudity related. Instead it involved some friends getting booted and throwing a snowball at the booter's car. An hour and a half later the cops, who I'm sure had nothing better to do on New Years Eve, showed up and gave us all a good scolding, because it is their duty to do so.

Beyond that, we went down to Provo for Whit's brother's wedding. We decorated his car and went through all the standard fare of oreos, shaving cream, plastic wrap and a large box of condoms, but also involved a 5 foot high bag of packing peanuts. Come to find out that last part should only be done on the very rarest of occasions to your worst enemies. It really crossed a line. I found out first-hand what it is like to clean out a car like that when we found out that the bride and groom missed their flight and spent the day in the airport trying to get another flight to Houston so they wouldn't miss their 3000 dollar cruise. After a day like that nobody should have to deal with a car full of packing peanuts. It all worked out in the end, today they are flying to Jamaica where the boat will pick them up on Wednesday.

More good news, as you can tell from the photo above my Blackbird, Fly arrived! It comes in this great plastic birdcage for storage. It's a little bit smaller than I had imagined but I'm excited to really try it out. I found a roll of film that very well could be from before my mission (8+ years) and I took a couple shots at the wedding on Saturday. I can already tell that I've been spoiled by digital photography and fancy DSLRs because I forget that I have to manually focus and wind the film.

Also on Friday I went to the BYU museum of art to see their show on Japanese Wood Block prints. All the prints are from their permanent collection and we actually got to talk for a while with the curator of the museum about the history of the prints. I've always been impressed with the prints but it's nothing until you see them in person. I always assumed that the prints were actually mixed-media because of the amount of detail, particularly in the typography, but it has all been meticulously carved to look that way. I tend to spend a lot of time working on my prints, but seeing these prints made me feel like I rush my way through all of it.











I found this on Scott Hansen's blog:

"If you count yourself among the ranks of web designers you know that Internet Explorer is still the bane of our collective existence. At some point, long ago, when Microsoft ruled the browser universe, some genius over there decided to give a big middle finger to all of us designers and our so-called 'web standards'. The result is that things just don’t look the way we as designers intend in IE: CSS elements don’t render properly and various functionality breaks down forcing us to implement IE-specific hacks and tweaks to make it all work. Well, MS, in their infinite wisdom, have finally decided to back down and have announced that the forthcoming eighth iteration of their Internet Explorer browser will embrace web standards. What a novel concept! Embracing web standards in a web browser? What will they think of next?"