Collaboration 4 and Breaking Bad

Working on the limestone

So apparently there's this thing called "March Madness".  Word on the street it has something to do with "sports". Both of these things are fairly foreign to me, but I like the sound of "March Madness" and for me and my next collaborating artist it was "March Mastic Madness". That's right folks. Barnes's mastic resin asphaltum reduction once again! Not just once-but twice!

My next collaborating artist was Elizabeth Sobel, an undergraduate student from UNM with an amazing drawing style. For her previous projects Elizabeth built up her image to create rich blacks and subtle grays, and based on her past images I thought working reductively to pull out her brights and highlights would be faster than building them up. This was also the first time we had three weeks to complete a project instead of the two we had before. I knew that most of the time allotted for the project would go toward creating the image itself because of the detail and the size- a full sheet 22" x 30".

So, while Elizabeth was working on her image I started a small project of my own using the same method. This way I'd have something to work on, wouldn't make Elizabeth feel rushed, and would get to try out a few new things with the process that she could potentially use in her own image- including painting back in with the asphaltum mixture, and mixing it with mineral spirits. The end result was a three-run print with two plates in the background- a light green and a white on cream paper with the key printed in dark brown.

The completed image on the stone

All things considered, Elizabeth's image turned out infinitely better than my own. :) Here's her image on the stone before processing and rolling up in black. She was a little concerned about the image being too bright, but I assured her the change from brown to black, combined with the slight filling in of really light areas made with steel wool would result in a much richer, darker final image.

We trial proofed three different colors for the background- a light tan the color of the limestone, a darker tan the color of the limestone when wet, and a murky green. The lightest tan was on a different kind of paper that had too much of a texture, but the dark tan and the green looked beautiful.

Trial proof with tan background

Trial proof with green background

Personally I liked both and could see the edition going either way. Ultimately Elizabeth decided she liked the warmth of the tan better, and the edition was pulled with her approval.

In other news a gentleman came by Tamarind to give us notice they would be filming AMC's "Breaking Bad" next door at the Denny's last week. As you can imagine they don't do a lot of filming in Fargo, so I camped out for a bit to watch the action that day. There wasn't a whole lot to see since most of the action was happening inside, but we did spot Aaron Paul who plays Jesse, and got to see this awesome "methebago" as Richard dubbed it. No idea what's going on, but once the final season airs it'll be great to see it and scream incoherently at the TV "I WAS THERE THAT DAY!"