I don't know that I so much completed this drawing today as simply called it 'done'. Either way, I'm moving on! "Annette" is my mother-in-law and she does NOT appreciate this portrait at all -- she thinks it makes her look too old and wrinkly (she's only eighty-one years old, after all) and just hates it! But _I_ love this image of her even though I had trouble with the drawing from beginning to end! I composed the image during two and a half weeks in December and began actually drawing and painting it January 2, 2008. I stopped work on it this morning after 592 hours of continuous drawing and 34 Sakura Jelly Roll .3mm ink pens. The Sakura pens are advertised to write to the last drop, but that last drop usually happens LONG before the ink runs out -- VERY annoying! Still searching for that 'ideal' writing instrument which leaves a permanent mark, very fine line, and writes reliably until the ink runs out. Not easy to find!
"Annette" next to "Crosby" on 2nd floor of my studio this morning
"Annette", Jan 27, 2008, 70 x 45 inches, watercolor with pen and ink drawing
on Arches 300lb. hot press watercolor paper
detail of "Annette" showing lines and colors
-- Mike
¶ 1:42 PM 2 comments links to this post
"Crosby" okubi-e (big-head picture), 84 x 45 inch pen and ink drawing is complete. This one is by far the most complex and involved drawing I've attempted with almost twice the line density of any previous drawing and over 10 million lines of code required to guide the machine movement. About three weeks to resolve the image and produce the code and almost 400 hours of continuous drawing! I beefed up the darkest areas by re-drawing and called it complete.
Here's an image of the portrait:
"Crosby" Dec 2007, 84 x 45 inches, pen and ink drawing on Arches 300 lb. hot press watercolor paper
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 9:38 AM 3 comments links to this post
Here's a 'revisit' to an approach I was very interested in a decade or more ago -- black line over color -- inspired by Hiroshige and other ukiyo-e artists (and the comic books I loved during my childhood)...
1996 monotypes with black ink over flat color areas
my wife, Linda and a self-portrait, each image about 16 x 11 inches
When my "Sarah" drawing was first exhibited at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the founder's wife appreciated it and invited me to create a similar life-size portrait of her husband, Crosby, a giant of a man and huge patron of the arts. I designed the image to include three flat colors, pink, blue, and tan to be painted in watercolor and then overlaid with the squiggly cross-hatched line drawing I've been developing over the past several years. I mounted a pencil in the gizmo I invented to carry my ink-pens and drew the color area outlines, then painted them very loosely with watercolor washes, using frisket to mask the outlines. Then mounted pen(s) and drew the image as usual.
"Crosby" pen and ink with watercolor, 90 x 45 inches
(permanent collection, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art)
I think the color turned out to be very effective, in spite of nasty technical problems caused mainly by uneven dampening of the paper during painting. That caused some expansion in the large sheet of Arches 300 lb. hot press watercolor paper which didn't completely shrink upon drying and left a half dozen large wrinkles which have persisted into the finished piece. Later this morning I'll lay the paper down flat, dampen it carefully (my inks are all water borne and very resoluble, so I'll have to be careful not to ruin the drawing after several hundred hours of work, and then see whether I can press the paper back to flat with a hot iron.
original 'plan' for color areas with mock-up
preparing to paint using pencil outline guides
pink watercolor applied -- belt still needs to be painted
frisket mask painted around area to become blue
Another nasty technical problem was caused by the frisking FRISKET!! Wouldn't you imagine that a product designed to be used on watercolor paper for masking would be non-staining?!? I used a frisket recommended by my local Dick Blick -- their house brand, same stuff as Windsor Newton (which I've found also stains the paper) -- but it left a dull reddish-brown 'halo' wherever I applied it! UGH! Blick carries a WHITE frisket which I hope (next time) will be non-staining! Very disappointing!
blue painting completed, frisket removed
tan painting completed and ink drawing underway -- detail shoes
similar detail of shoes -- drawing completed
drawing about 80% complete -- son Scott, home for Thanksgiving, comes down to watch
-- Mike
¶ 10:19 AM 1 comments links to this post
At the opening of the Kemper Museum "Backstage Pass" show last month, master printer Mike Sims of Lawrence Lithography Workshop invited me to design some images for him to publish. I made half a dozen designs for him and he selected "Jim", a litho using six plates, three of various transparency white inks and three of various transparency black inks on mid-value paper.
I experimented with a number of possible paper colors and decided the Tan was most appropriate for the image, although likely too light -- but I really wanted the paper (not ink) to establish the mid-values as it peeks through all the tiny spaces between lines and through the transparent inks used in four of the plates.
In order to create the mockups I actually created program files as though I were going to make these drawings on my CNC machine. Then I spent a few days writing a new program to convert my drawings into AutoCad DXF files which I loaded into Adobe Illustrator. This was VERY cool (to me) as it allowed me to experiment with various line thicknesses and transparencies and paper colors in order to optimize the films for the plates by 'seeing' accurate previews of the finished print before any plates had been burned or proofed. The image below is reduced from one such full-scale mock-up.
click image for nearly life-size mock-up (2mb PDF)
"Jim" 42x30 inches, lithograph from six plates on Rives BFK Tan paper
pre-production pricing -- contact Lawrence Lithography Workshop for information
I'd originally imagined we could 'dye' white paper a nice mid-gray using sumi or other water-based pigment -- my thought here was to print lighter and darker inks so that the paper color becomes the mid-range of the image, the image being produced from cross hatched squiggley lines similar to my recent drawings.
I tested my paper-coloring idea and abandoned it as beyond me. LLW suggested printing the entire sheet gray, but that was unappealing to me... It's important to me to maintain the 'paper' quality of the paper. So I tested the design, trying out various available papers and decided on Rives BFK Tan which is dark enough for the image and adds a very appropriate color.
In order to accomplish the drawings for the plates, I wrote some (very cool) code to prepare my squiggly lines for a local pre-press shop to produce films from which Mike Sims and the Lawrence Lithography Workshop folk could make the litho plates.
The films for the six plates arrived today and they are pretty spectacular, actually! WOW! I'm SO excited and happy to see these -- and very satisfied to have more or less precipitated my ideas into 'reality' so directly and effortlessly! Here's a photo showing Aaron Shipps (Tamarind Institute master printer and Mike Sims' assistant) with some of the large film positives from which they'll make the plates.
Master printer Aaron Shipps with films for "Jim" lithograph.
Plates were burned from the films yesterday (10-17-2007) and they turned out GREAT! Totally amazing to me what perfectly clear sharp lines appeared when the plates were developed. This is going to be a very successful print, I think, and the scale is terrific. VERY exciting, and very gratifying that Lawrence Lithography is investing such an enormous amount of time and money in publishing my work!
Master Printers Aaron Shipps and Mike Sims develop plate
click on image to view movie of plate creation (00:03:30 4mb)
Printing should begin on Monday!
October 25-26, 2007 -- first proofs of "Jim"
click image above for movie (3.5mb download) pulling first complete proof
Mike Sims (foreground) and Aaron Shipps (background) inspect proofs at LLW
First proof of "Jim" (click image for detail)
amazingly close, I think, to my mock-up (first image in post)
but whites are too cool and perhaps too opaque in the proof...
The BFK paper has turned out to be too light in value to provide the mid-values the image requires. We're considering various measures to darken the paper... Tea-staining the BFK Tan to make the paper darker overall, printing a flat over the entire sheet, printing a 7th plate in a mid-value under the image (I've produced an image for film to accomplish that, but that method is pretty far afield from my 'pure' concept of lightening and darkening the paper through cross-hatched squiggles, so I'd much prefer either finding or producing a darker paper than under-printing the 7th plate...
November 5 and 6 proof on BFK Tan paper which I printed mokuhanga style from two blocks (first printing a cherry block in a blue/green, and then an ash block in a neutralish red which gave the pronouced wood grain)
The proof above might be the direction we follow for the print. In this one, a silhouette in dark brown was printed on top of the mokuhanga style woodgrain printing, then the six blocks in whites and blacks was printed on top. Today, I'll run over to LLW to print four more sheets in a similar fashion, but a bit darker, and we'll try to eliminate the silhouette plate. The middle black in the print above was TOO transparent, I think, and didn't pop properly, so we'll try to fix that as well. Lots of work ahead before it's ready for editioning!
Jim dropped in to see some of the proofs at LLW 11/28/2007
More to follow as the edition proceeds!
-- Mike
Labels: drawing, Lithography, Woodblock
¶ 5:58 PM 5 comments links to this post
Last night, Linda and I had a ball at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art here in Kansas City. It was the opening of their new show, Backstage Pass: Collecting Art in Kansas City which runs September 7–November 4, 2007.
(l-r) Roger Shimomura paintings, Chuck Close prints, Mike Lyon drawings
play short video of exhibition highlights, (2.5 minutes 2.7mb)
- By pairing artworks from area private collections with examples by the same artists represented in the Kemper Museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition offers visitors a rare opportunity to see outstanding paintings, photographs, and sculptures by internationally acclaimed artists, including Willem de Kooning, Duane Hanson, Deborah Butterfield, Helen Frankenthaler, Lezley Saar, and Mike Lyon, among others, normally housed in private homes and offices. The diversity and quality of the featured works are not only a testament to Kansas City’s rich history of supporting the visual arts through public and private patronage, but also proof to the thriving support and enthusiasm for the arts in the city today.
...(from Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art)...
Partial catalog of exhibition with mention on page 2 (click image to view PDF)
Backstage Pass showcases noteworthy paintings by prominent American artists Richard Estes, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, and Frank Stella, highlighting the level of commitment and intensity shared by many area collectors.
Equally important are the collections that include works by artists that reside in the Kansas City area, such as Wilbur Niewad, Roger Shrmomura, and Michael Sincair. Portraits by Andy Warhol and Kansas City-based Mike Lyon illustrate the gratifying relationship that often develops between artist and patron-arguably one of the most enjoyable facets of championing living artists.
Rachael Blackburn Cozad, Director
Christopher Cook, Curator
Wow! What a thrill!
-- Mike
Labels: drawing, Exhibitions
¶ 5:53 PM 4 comments links to this post
I've been working on this painting continuously since I first posted an image of it July 1 (by continuously, I really do mean 24/7, of course). The paper just couldn't take any more physical contact -- it had become extremely abraded and fuzzy -- so I switched over to using an airbrush and painted it in many layers alternating between a deep blue-black acrylic in the mid to dark areas and white in the light to mid areas. That beefed up the color in the abraided (dark)areas. The development of color, texture (quite genuine sculptural texture, albeit fuzzy), an unusual impasto, and a kind of battle between white and black through all the layers of light and dark is VERY INTERESTING to me and has stimulated me to move in some new (actually ancient -- I'm thinking mid-value ground with light and dark scribbles defining the image out of the mids, like renaissance chalk drawing, maybe) directions which I'll continue to experiment with later this summer.
In the meanwhile, gentle reader (always wanted to write that somewhere -- now seems as good a time as any, right?), here's the current (and final) state of the painting I first showed in my July 1 post...
Self Portrait, 43 x 27 inches, July 10, 2007, painting in acrylics on Rives BFK
Self Portrait, 43 x 27 inches, July 10, 2007, painting in acrylics on Rives BFK
-- Mike
¶ 6:56 PM 4 comments links to this post
Today I completed "Rick", another large scale pen and ink drawing, this one measuring 75 x 45 inches on Arches 300 lb. hot press watercolor paper.
"Rick", March 27, 2007, pen and ink on paper, 75 x 45 inches
"Rick" exhibited at Art Chicago, 2007 (photo: Julio Rodriguez)
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 3:22 PM 3 comments links to this post
On March 19, 2007 after 240 hours of continuous drawing with pen and ink, I completed "Anthony", a pen and ink drawing 83 x 45 inches on Arches 300 lb. hot press watercolor paper.
"Anthony", 83 x 45 inches, 2007, pen and ink on paper
-- Mike Lyon
Labels: drawing
¶ 12:08 PM 2 comments links to this post
Large scale pen and ink drawing -- a portrait of my friend, Jim W. At 84 inches high (7 ft) it's one of the largest of my drawings. I like the rendering of the hairs and of the fabric of the shirt where the woven threads can be made out in places...
"Jim", Dec 19, 2006, 84 x 45 inches, pen and ink on Arches watercolor paper
Corporate collection: Emprise Bank, Wichita
-- Mike Lyon
Labels: drawing
¶ 3:47 PM 0 comments links to this post
I've been using the Z-axis of my CNC machine to lift the pen from the paper during jogs to new drawing locations, but these very small movements of .05 inches or so have severely worn a single tooth in the pinion gear which moves the Z so it will have to be replaced... In order to avoid such uneven wear in the future, I developed a solenoid operated pen lifter which also significantly speeds completion of the drawings, as the solenoid lift and drop is almost instantaneous while the Z moves much slower... "Shea" involved about 5 million lines of movement code including over 100,000 pen lifts -- seems to work quite well!
Here are two photos of the controls mounted in the machine and working:
The mounted assembly in operation
Detail showing simple pen guide (a small hole)
Here's the completed pen and ink drawing of "Shea":
"Shea", Dec. 4, 2006, 77x45, pen and ink drawing
-- Mike Lyon
Labels: drawing
¶ 9:45 AM 1 comments links to this post
"Arthur" pen and ink drawing completed October 31 after 282 hours -- almost 9 miles of ink line and 8 million lines of machine movement instruction. This one used a new (to me) pen with oil based ink and I'm not very fond of this pen at all. Drawn on Rives BFK paper, the paper turned out to be too soft to hold up well under all the drawing, the ink went in somewhat grayish and although I very much like this image of my 83 year old friend with the youthful eyes and hair, Arthur Kase, the drawing itself lacks the crispness of my previous work. The pen eventually abraded the paper surface in the darker areas and then kinda soaked into the rough surface in a way I don't much appreciate.
"Arthur", Oct 31, 2006, 77 x 42.5 inches
pen and ink on Rives BFK paper
Private collection
(exhibited September 7–November 4, 2007 Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art)
I'm about to begin another drawing, this time using water-borne pigmented inks and a tiny capillary pen. But first I have to solder up a little circuit to actuate a pen-lift solenoid so that the tiny hollow nib can 'float' over the paper without bending and breaking. Should begin this full color drawing middle of next week and I'm very excited to see this one develop!!!!
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 10:20 AM 0 comments links to this post
"London" pen and ink drawing completed this morning after 208 hours -- 5.83 miles of ink line (just under 1/2 inch drawn per second) . I think I like it! You may click the images below to see larger versions!
"London" completed September 13, 2006, 78 x 45 inches, pen and ink on Arches 300 lb. hot press watercolor paper
Collection: Barkley (formerly Barkley Evergreen & Partners)
detail: click image for enlargement
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 1:50 PM 2 comments links to this post
"Jon" will be my final pen and ink drawing for a while, as I have now begun work on a third large-scale woodblock print of "Sara" reclining in bed -- a bit larger than life-size from 17 blocks... More on that later -- here's the "Jon" drawing, 76 x 45 inches:
click image to enlarge
"Jon", 76 x 45 inches, pen & ink drawing, completed July 10, 2006
Permanent Collection, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art
click image to enlarge
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 4:07 PM 1 comments links to this post
The completed Lily drawing outlined in a previous post...
click image for enlargement
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 12:03 PM 0 comments links to this post
Today I am about a third of the way through another pen and ink drawing, this one of my god-daughter, Lily... Although Lily is usually smiling and showing off, I liked her ambiguous expression in this image... Yesterday noon, Lily and her Mom, Sarah, showed up at the studio with a half-hour to kill before their lunch date (one of Sarah's costume design grad students was hired by the Metropolitan Opera, and they were going to have a goodbye luncheon across the street)...
So I asked Lily to model for me and designed this drawing in a half-day, by far my fastest drawing design effort to date! By around six PM I got my drawing machine going and it began following the paths I'd defined, dragging another fine-point pen over a 66 x 45 inch sheet of paper...
Here's a brief (1 minute and about 1mb streaming download) video of the "Lily" drawing in progress -- press the '>' play button to begin...
Here's a tiny version of my source image:
click image to enlarge
Here's a shot of the drawing underway:
click image to enlarge
Hope you enjoy this one!
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 12:23 PM 2 comments links to this post
Yesterday (June 13, 2006) I completed a smaller drawing of two children, Ethan and Arianna. Pen and ink, but a denser line pattern -- about 140 hours to complete on 45 x 31 inch Arches 300 lb. hot press watercolor paper. Here is a shot of the drawing plus some details -- click the photos to enlarge...
"Ethan and Arianna", 45 x 31 inches, pen and ink
Private collection
detail: Arianna's head
detail: Arianna's sweater
detail: trousers
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 4:49 PM 3 comments links to this post
Here's the latest pen and ink drawing -- a full life-size family portrait of Sarah, Lily, and Greg -- about 150 hours of drawing using an extra-fine "Precise V5" rolling ball pen with black ink. On Arches 300 lb. hot press watercolor paper, approximately 87 x 45 inches completed May 23, 2006:
click image for larger view
a few details:
 Sarah |  Lily |  Greg |
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 10:05 AM 0 comments links to this post
Another life-size pen and ink drawing (extra fine point rolling ball pen) -- this one of Shannon and Danielle partially robed, about 90 inches by 45 inches on Arches 300lb hot press watercolor paper...
click image for enlargement
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 2:47 PM 0 comments links to this post
I completed another large machine drawing a couple of days ago (and a third was completed a few minutes ago -- photo to come later).
This is a life-size pen and ink drawing "Elizabeth and Rod" which is 88 1/2 x 43 1/2 inches:
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 2:59 PM 0 comments links to this post
The first two papers I tried for this life-size figure drawing weren't strong enough and they were torn to shreds relatively early in the process. I finally had success (after almost a month of experimenting) with Arches 300 lb. hot press watercolor paper -- it is VERY strong and held up beautifully!
click drawing to enlarge  "Sarah" April 5, 2006, 7 x 3.75 feet, pen and ink drawing Permanent Collection, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art |
The squiggly lines in my new drawing are concentric tracings of each tone layer -- in that drawing there are 22 tones, I believe -- I was experimenting (pretty successfully) with creating tone by that weird cross-hatching -- each tone layer was treated exactly the same way -- by 'coloring' them in with little parallel concentric squiggles on about .o8" centers -- quite a programming challenge! First I traced the darkest area, next the two darkest areas as if they were one area (changes the shape of the area so a random sort of 'cross hatching' may occur), then traced the three darkest areas as if they were single shapes, etc. etc. until finally I traced the entire non-white area... Worked well! The paper held up and in the darks, there's a beautiful low-relief 'combing' from the repeated passing of the extra-fine point Precise V5 Rolling Writer pen (eight or nine of them, actually -- they only hold enough ink for 10 or 12 hours of drawing)... I'm finding it quite difficult to briefly describe my process, but it's pretty simple, really...
You can find a movie of one of these drawings underway in the very earliest stage at http://mlyon.com/blog/2006/03/machine-drawing.html -- in a way, this drawing took exactly one month to produce, if you include the previous failed efforts and the one-week workshop I taught at Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT last month.
-- Mike LyonLabels: drawing
¶ 7:20 AM 0 comments links to this post
Started a drawing today -- 2,000,000 lines of movement code to lay down 'squiggle hatching' of 23 overlapping tones using a 'Rolling Writer' pen, hoping there's enough ink in the pen to complete the drawing! I'ts a larger than life portrait of "Sarah" wearing a yukata with an intense pattern all over...
Press the '>' play button when it appears to view a short movie (1.5mb) of the beginning of the project!
-- Mike
Labels: drawing
¶ 4:56 PM 5 comments links to this post
