Photo Session

Still haven't heard anything new from Tom about the Nashville/Robert Johnson show, but I do know a little more about another upcoming show where I plan to show the same prints- the one in Ocean Grove in our building.   The departure of Elyse has not changed the plans to have it, just who is in charge of it. A few days ago I got an email, saying we should be sending information to Joe Borzotta, which partly confirmed what I had heard from Jeanne in the office.  But before that was due I got another email from Jeanne, with a form to be filled out and sent to her, as well as request for images and other information about the works.   I have known for months what I plan to show and that I had frames to do it.  (important now that frames are much harder to buy)  Even bought some fresh mat board for the occasion.  The form asked for titles, sized of frames, prices, etc.  My newer laptop would allow me to open and fill out the form, and attach it to an email, so I did all that and sent it to Jeanne, who confirmed reception of it.  

Photos were more of a problem.  Oh, I had some, a bunch of images I had taken to send to Tom, the gallery making the plates, etc.  However, I did not have what this form asked me to send.  I had made some extra large jpegs earlier this year, the file size to match up with what was requested for the places in Nashville.  However, here we were asked to make smaller jpegs, under 1 MB, and a maximum size of 1200 dpi.  Don't get me started on the dpi thing, a measurement used for printing on paper, and not for digital photography.  But I could make smaller file sizes, so that became the new mission.

I knew I had better proofs up at the Studio, and conditions are better there for taking photos.  So I went there late this morning with my camera.  One thing I found was that the small file setting on my camera was too small to make photos of the right size, so I had to set to the smaller of the M settings and crop it from there.  

 

As usual, Molly had her stuff all over my portable tack board, so I decided to use the wall board I have attached to the wall above the cabinet.  The proofs themselves are nice and flat, inside my drying rack.  I have three things in the show, so I just had three things to photograph today.  One at a time I stuck them to the wall with push pins, and took my photos from a little further away than usual. Back home I loaded a few at a time into my computer, editing the best of each, preparing it for sending in.   Before leaving, I stopped by the office and saw Jeanne, who again confirmed receiving the form, and being able to open it and read it, which is important.  She said the photo size wasn't that important, just wanted to make sure what we all sent in wasn't too big.  I understand that from running blogs, where I was often sent photos that were over 8 MB in size, way bigger than what was needed for an online showing.  Below are the results of today's photo session.

All look fine to me.  All are under 1MB each, as requested.  However, all are a little larger in pixel size (the proper way to measure digital photos, not that dpi nonsense), than what the form asked for.   Since Jeanne seemed to indicate today that the actual size was not that important, I decided what I had done would be fine.  If they want to use them as such, all well and good, and if they are still too big, they are welcome to apply some software to these, or the larger files if they want me to send those.  

I left the disc books at home today, as I didn't expect to be there long.  But for music I did put on the home burned disc I have of Bob Marley and the Wailers, my favorites from Babylon By Bus, plus another live track from another disc I had.  Good music to work to, and one I keep there for days like this.  I wrote about it on this blog back in October of 2021 if you want to know more about it.

UPDATE-  I sent the photos as requested, and heard nothing back as of 11:00 pm.  I hadn't necessarily expected to, as we are entering a holiday weekend, and a lot of people are already on vacation.  The deadline for sending in the photos is still more than a week away, so I am ahead of schedule.  I have mat boards, so can cut those sometime soon.  The plan was to hang the show sometime in early October, and the opening reception is currently scheduled for the evening on October 12th, but I would not be surprised if that changes between now and then.  Things move around a lot in that building.

Blood Draw part 7

 Had a free day today and some things to find out about, so I went up to the Studio after a few local errands.  First the bank, then gas up the car, then the supermarket.  And from there, up to Ocean Grove.  One of my bits of business was finding out more about the upcoming tenants show.  Got an email about it a few days ago, and figured I'd ask Jeanne about it if she was in, and she was.  Found out a bit more about the new hanging system.  Most galleries now use a hanging system, rather than measuring the proper height and distance, and then driving a nail into the wall to hang the picture on.  The good thing about such systems is that they are much faster than the old way of doing things.  The bad thing is that it keeps the frame away from the wall, so usually the frame is sticking out on one side or the other.  We can't drive nails into our historic walls, and had been using long wires hung from hooks on a rail way up on the walls,  maybe even tougher than nailing up individual pieces.  The email told us that sawtooth hangers were out, and Jeanne verified that this new one would be a hook and wire system, so all frames had to be individually wired, but I am used to doing that.  

With all that settled, I got down to work.  Today I had brought with me my collection of nurse images from the jobs section of the newspaper, which I could use as source material.  Just using pencils for now, I drew in the clothing on my nurse drawing blood, a typical scrub outfit.  Also for now, more bandages to show where some previous blood draws had been done on my arms.  These are probably just placeholders for now.  I left the ink at home, deciding to do all the shadows at once, the arms and hands, and the scrubs.   Not much else to draw at this point, so maybe that's next time.  Results can be seen below:

I had brought my rock/pop collection of discs with me with no particular plan, but then I had conversation with a trainee bank teller that made me think of a Joe Jackson lyric, and I had that album with me (my home burned version of Big World) so it worked out.   I wrote about that particular 3 sided record back in October of 2019 if you want to know more about it.  

Blood Draw part 6

 

I was on my way to the Studio this morning, so naturally my parents both had lists of groceries they wanted me to pick up.  Not written down, so this was whatever I would remember.  On my way, got some gas for the car, then up to the Studio.  Being distracted by all the food I heard, I forgot to grab some of what I planned to bring with me, so my plans for the day didn't go quite as expected, but I got some work done. 

One thing I did bring with me was a latex glove, from the supply for my mother's twice daily treatment. We have a whole box of them.  I figured that I'd need one for the new piece.  I was the hands for everything in my latest work, both mine and the person drawing blood.  Using a mirror, I had sketched in the two sets of hands, but I would need to have one pair gloved for the piece to have any accuracy. So once again I set up a mirror, had the glove on both my right and left and took turns drawing what I saw in front of me.  Used my original hand sketches as a starting point, but changed them a little to reflect the new reality.   For example, new overall smoother lines, elimination of nails, but more folds of latex rubber.  Got the basics done.  Skipped most of the shadows for now, as one of the things I didn't get was my clamp lamp, which would allow me to get the strong light and shadow effect I want for the piece.  Next time, I guess.  Since I am not doing shadows yet, no point in the drawing ink yet.  Results can be seen below:

For music today I had brought my smaller Jazz/Blues case, and from this randomly chose Gil Scott-Heron's The Revolution will Not be Televised, or at least my home burned version of it.  If I recall, the original collection had songs from the first two albums he produced, and I think my home burned version took songs from both albums.  If you want to know more, you can read what I blogged back in September of 2021.

On the way home I stopped at the supermarket, got a bag full of the groceries that I remembered, then headed home for lunch.  

Blood Draw part 5

 

Various things involving family members have kept me from getting up to the Studio as much as I might like, then a few days ago I got an email from the director telling me she had moved on and was no longer working there.  So my first priority this week was seeing how this affected me, if at all.  I did verify that the planned fall tenants show would still happen, and the rest we will see about.  

Today I was there to work on some woodcut.  It's been a few weeks since I asked a nurse if she wanted to take part.  At the time she seemed down on the idea, so I am not surprised she didn't contact me.   I will take that as it is now all up to me.  Last time I started sketching a nurse in pencil, based on a charcoal of a face with pronounced shadows, something from my figure drawing days in Belmar.  Not a perfect source, but one I could work with.  Rather than try to dig the original out of the basement, I had sketched the original drawing in pencil (from my blog) in my sketchbook, and brought that to the Studio to work from.  The first attempt (in pencil, still waiting for the potential model) was okay, but when I looked at the block with a mirror at home, I could see the face wasn't right.  And since this block will be printed as a mirror image and the print seen, I definitely had to fix it before any cutting.  

So today I did just that.  First using that same pencil re-sketch to make adjustments to my first block sketch, and since that one looked better both forwards and backwards, I went ahead and inked the head and neck.  I would much rather have had a live model, but this will have to do.  All the arms (both mine and hers) will have to wait until I set up the proper lighting, so I can get similar shadows to the ones I have already inked.  Then I'll put in some background values, balancing lights and darks with what I have for the various figures.  Today's results can be seen below:

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I have no deadline for this piece, so I can take my time and get things the way I want before moving on.  For example, I won't draw the scrubs on the nurse until I have a source to work from.  I have a pile of photos of such things, but they are at home today.  I guess that all be the next step.   But as I get to the next step, I'll post something here.  

Meanwhile, for music today I had with me my jazz/blues book and so I picked something randomly from that- Cassandra Wilson's New Moon Daughter, which I knew to be a single album recording, and thus about what I would need for today's drawing session.  If you want to read more about this recording, I wrote about it back in January of 2022.  

Blood Draw part 4

 I didn't feel an overwhelming need to be in the Studio today, but I went mostly because I had been asked to do so.  We were scheduled to have a visit from Vin Gopal today.  I know the name- a local politician, in this case a state senator whose district coincides with our area.  I assume he is somewhat responsible for our funding, since at least some of our budget comes from state government.  In any case, the boss asked if anyone could be in their studios today, to show the place in action I guess.  There were a lot of potential family conflicts of a medical nature, but we worked it out and I got up there a little past 1:00.  I let Elyse know I would be in my space after all, if she wanted to drag anyone through.  She mentioned that there were two other basement studios operating today, so I figured a good chance they would make it to the basement.  I assume that any politician has their day all planned out, so assuming he made it to our building on time, he would be leaving on time, so as long as he got the basement by 3, I would see him, and he would see our Studio.

With all that done, time to get to work.  I had started this latest block a while ago, but haven't worked on it for a few weeks.  That was because I wanted to get a live model for the nurse drawing blood, and so far I have to takers.  I have enough training and finished drawings that I can do this without one, but it would make for a better and more accurate drawing if I had someone in front of me for a little while.  The part that is myself I did with the help of various mirrors, but I waited on drawing the nurse for a little while in case someone came along.  Meanwhile, I had done pencil sketches of some charcoal possibilities, doing these with pencil in my sketchbook, much more practical than trying to bring a laptop with me. Eventually I sketched one of my portrait faces on the block, using the pencil sketch as a reference, and then adjusting my new pencil sketch on wood as I went.  (I believe that the model was a woman named Marissa who occasionally modeled there in Belmar, but it has been more than a decade since I did the original charcoal drawing, so I don't know)  I also looked at my new sketch in a mirror to see how t turned out, a trick I learned in my painting days, but especially important in a woodcut as this will be seen backwards in the final print, and I'd hate to find out at that point there was a problem.  The results of today's work can be seen below:

I just did today's drawing in pencil, just in case I find a suitable model after all and want to change things.   But if no one turns up in a few weeks I'll just start with this and work from there.  It's not perfect, but it's something.

Meanwhile, we were approaching 3 pm, and still no visitors. Then I heard some voices out in the hallway, and Elyse's voice mentioning there was one more artist at work in the basement.  Then they all came in, quite a mob of people.  I was introduced to our guest of honor, a little bit about Molly and I was said, a little about my work, and soon everyone was gone.  I don't know what it all means, but maybe I'll find out later.  In any case, I had done my part.  I straightened things out, then locked up.  On the way out I stopped to speak to Bobby, also present today in the basement.  He said the visit to his space was also very quick, so I guess everyone got the same treatment.