Thursday, June 22, 2006

Drawing from Life




A lot of my more imaginative work is drawn directly onto the printing plate with minimal pre-drawing and then evolves as the drawing progresses. Although a very different discipline this way of creating images benefits from my love of drawing from a live model. I've posted some details of life drawings today. These are very quick sketches scratched out in less than a minute, some times much faster. The Dynamic Man is a very old plate that I have recently "re-visited" and enjoyed printing up again and is a sort of hybrid between a life drawing and a worked plate. This is one of the great things about printing ie. that I can still print and sell work made many years ago, if its any good.

2 comments:

Aeron said...

Have you had any success in leaving extra ink on the plate in areas other then the bitten lines?

Brian McKenzie said...

Hi Aeron , thanks for your continued interested and support. Yes, sometimes I like to leave ink on the surface to enrichen a print. This does mean that each print can appear different from any other copy in the edition. The drypoint technique of the life drawings here really benefits from the bur that gives them a characteristc rich quality. These plates are not bitten but simply heavily scratched and it is the raised cut of the plate material that encourges ink to remain on the surface.