"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.