John Fellows - Printmaking/Media Handling

John Fellows is a printmaker I looked at last year for a unit called Specialist Techniques where I chose.. well.. Printmaking. John collects a variety of paper, hand written letters and maps dating back to 1880's and collages them to print on to make a completely unique print with his completely unique style.
Now collaging paper together to print on is actually something I've been heavily thinking about for a couple of days while my mind has been what I like to call "art ticking" so I thought doing a report on John would be a great idea.

We Are All In This Together (Sink or Swim) / 16”x20” / linoleum carving collage on used nautical chart / 2011

 Der Holzfaller / 10”x17” / linoleum carving collage on topographic map / 2013

Der Wanderer  /  10"x8"  / Linoleum carving collage on Swiss topo map  / 2014

I think John is one of my favourite artists, I love the idea of using maps in art, and especially when its the use of maps with print!!

I love the way he carves shapes and the way he designs the illustrative human face. He just very much makes my arty brain tick and think about how I can be better with lino, how to cut certain lines and what to do within my own work I guess.

He also posted his process on his website and that was pretty helpful.

Molly Hashimoto - Printmaking/Media handling

A lot of Molly's work are block prints with watercolour. I found Molly while I was cleaning a woman's house this morning and noticed her calendar in the kitchen and was instantly drawn to it and thought, "HEY!, I'm going to look into her for my Printmaking AND Exploratory Media Handling units!".
Molly lives in Seattle, Washington and her work is usually put into calendars, postcards, gift books, etc. Her work is usually of birds and nature... but mostly birds, I see... Her prints are put onto rag paper, and printed with oil-based inks and are hand tinted with Watercolour.

I think I'd enjoy this technique and defiantly going to try it, maybe use gouache too in my experiments.

Crow and Moon 8x10

Owl and moon

Crow, Moon and cherry blossoms 8x10

All of them have a great, illustrative use of line and colour and I don't particularly think I have a favourite print at all as they all appeal to me and I'm excited to get back to college to try this technique for myself :)

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Printmaking

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was born on May 6th, 1880 in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. Ernst was considered to be a part of the Expressionism and Die Brucke movements. Die Brucke was a group of German expressionist artists that came together in 1905, Ernst was one of the founding members.
Unfortunately Ernst committed suicide on June 15, 1938 while the Nazi's rose to power and their campaign against "Degenerate Art."

The human figure was very important to Ernst's work, he portrayed the figure in movement, as he believed that it expressed the natural form of the human body.

I selected a few prints of his that I particularly liked, throughout all of them that I've seen, I've discovered I love his style and graphic-ness in the prints, something I may want to attempt in any future lino prints I do myself.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, woodcut, portrait of henry van de veldes, 1917

Out of the three I've chosen I think this one is my favourite. I love the use of line and composition with the face and the landscape behind. I also love that there's so much to look at in this print, and I think the print just being black and white adds to it somehow.

interesting how simple line can hold so much detail.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Man's Head, Self Portrait (1926) woodcut

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Tribulations of Love, 1915, Colour woodcut

These last two I decided to put in as they use colour and kind of the process of a reduction print.

Just like the first one, I like the use of line, and in this case I also love the use of colour.
All of his prints are very interesting and to me, very eye pleasing and I don't think I've seen one that I didn't like that much.