Had an interesting session in the studio today. I finished indexing my old archive of images and I started on my next "test" print/image. I don't have it to post tonight (as it only exists as a print), but it was a really productive and exciting session. This time I picked four "like" images (they were all images of ice - from Walden Pond). Instead of layering them in Photoshop, I worked on each image separately and then layered them in the printing process.
Can I just say that I like this process much better than using Photoshop to do the layering (that I tried last week). This is much more like building a watercolor painting, or a perhaps a lithograph or serigraph (or other type of print that you build color layer-by-layer). I'm still just working with randomly selected (and technically challenged) images, but I think I'm going to play with them a bit further. I feel that this method gets me a lot closer to the materials and I can foresee how it might create challenges similar to what an abstract painter faces when working out a painting. I can also foresee the different (and traditional) approaches I may need to use to work them out with (such as sketches and actual painting studies), in turn making this process even more "intimate" and integrative, as I translate the analog studies back to the digital/photographic environment, and this excites me tremendously.
Oh, and by the way, I completely threw Rule No. 2 away (the color should be true to the natural image) in the process. Hey–I said my rules were meant to be broken, as long as I know the reason why. In this case the issue of “building” color, like in the printmaking process, dictated that I “control” the color for my overall desired result. Okay, okay, so that’s ‘old hat’ for a painter… I never said I didn’t have a lot to learn!
More to come....
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