My kids know of my interest  — for Christmas Scott and Andy gave me a variety of white and silver ink-pens for my drawing experiments!  What a GREAT gift!  And they turned me on to JetPens.com at the same time (Japanese pens — VAST variety OMG — though my kids all tell me NEVER to say ‘OMG’ in public)!

In preparation for larger scale work, I made several series of small drawings in order to experiment with color and value for the tinted areas and to learn more about how the white inks might work for me in these drawings.  The first series were three drawings of “Danielle”.  I later made six of “Elizabeth” which I’ll show in my next post.

A little like the story of the three bears, my first tinted ground was ‘too dark’.  Then I came to the second drawing, and I made that one ‘too light’.  Then I made a third drawing and the ground in that one was ‘just right’ — or close enough.  My wife thinks “Danielle” is spooky looking, but the image stirs me in an indescribably delicious way (from Goldilocks to Peter Paul Mounds)…  I really like the way this drawing pulls at my gut!  I also really like the somewhat opaque nature of the white ink — it gets whiter and whiter with each subsequent layer (a dozen or so layers of white in this drawing) and covers both the tinted ground and the black ink in a very appealing way!

“Danielle 3″, Jan 2011, 20 x 12 inches, white and black ink on tinted paper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyYwB56Tkbk

three Danielle drawings -- like the three bears, the first ground was tooooo dark, the next one was tooooo light, and the last one was JUST RIGHT (or at least getting pretty close)!

"Danielle 2", Jan 2011, 20 x 12 inches, white and black ink on tinted paper

"Danielle 3", Jan 2011, 20 x 12 inches, white and black ink on tinted paper

Danielle 1 underway in the bright morning sun

Danielle 2 (foreground) and Danielle 3 (top) just getting underway

setup for time lapse video of application of white ink to Danielle 3

'Grass-2', July 16, 2010, woodblock print, 22.5 x 72 inches, 16 blocks printed onto 8 sheets of hosho paper by Iwano Ichibei

computer controlled router carves block on sheet of quarter-inch plywood

another view of CNC machining area

Printing accessories, clockwise from lower left: larger mizu-bake (water brush), camelia oil (baren lubricant), pigment suspensions and pigment application brush, smaller mizu-bake, baren (printing pad), hanga bake (printing brush)

Using misu-bake to dampen block

applying pigment to dampened block

using hanga-bake to brush pigment evenly into block

sliding sheet out of paper-delivery drawer and registering it to kento in block -- right foot about to tap switch to close drawer

turning crank to print sheet

after printing block four -- prints in take-up drawer under press.

after printing block 15 -- sheets in take-up drawer under press

detail of completed print

detail of completed print

detail of completed print

detail of signature and seal on completed print

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1rqU-TUiBI

Thanks SO much to artist, Peregrine Honig (also see HERE), who bounced purposefully for two hours on the small trampoline in my studio as we chatted and photographed hundreds of mostly very blurry images while she wore her fabulous black and silver sequined mini dress with matching bunny eared hat!!

You may open a higher resolution version in a new window by CLICKING HERE

It’s a bit difficult for me to illustrate such a long image on a web page, so here’s an experiment suggested by Scott Goldberg — I’ve rotated the drawing vertically and enabled a script so that as you move your mouse over the image below, an enlargement window should appear and you can magnify any area you please.

You can make the window larger or smaller and magnify or reduce the image in the window by holding down your mouse button and moving left and right and up and down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C38ADTUEJlo

It was a fairly large show and very fun to hang (and hang with her again)!  Rebecca organized the images in an interesting way — boys on one side, girls on the other!  It made a whacky sort of sense to me!

When I arrived for the opening, Rebecca had arranged for Camille Dautrich (writer for Springfield’s News Leader paper) to interview me which was pretty fun, though I’m no expert at that sort of thing.  Then I presented an hour-long lecture copiously illustrated with slides and video and THAT was a blast!  Maybe 30 faculty and students were present, they had lots of interesting questions and comments, and I felt it had all gone very well.  Several arts faculty took us to a great dinner (Linda and my daughter, Allegra, were with me) and, exhausted and a little drunk, I slept most of the way home while Linda drove.  Very satisfying event!

Here’s a short video walk-through of the exhibition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVTWyU4pgXQ

North installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

East installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

North-East installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

South installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

hour-long slide and video lecture was well received - audience seemed especially to love the many short videos of work in process. (photo: Rebecca Miller)

Drury University

The Department of Art & Art History and the Pool Art Center Gallery

Paintings, Drawings, and Prints: MIKE LYON

Pool Art Center Gallery

940 N. Clay Avenue
Springfield, MO  65802
417-873-7263
www.drury.edu/pacgallery

March 5-26, 2010 viewing hours: Monday – Friday, 8am – 5pm and Thursday 8am – 8pm

Artist Talk Friday, March 5, 6-7pm

Opening Reception Friday, March 5, 6-9pm

This review appeared in the Springfield News Leader:

NEWS-LEADER. News-Leader.com Tuesday, March 16, 2010 78

Artist creates through computer programs

by Camille DAUTRlCH

It’s complicated.

No, I’m not changing disciplines and reviewing Meryl Streep’s recent movie. I’m talking about the process by which Kansas City artist Mike Lyon creates his monumental works of art, now on display at Drury’s Pool Art Center.

Armed with a knowledge of centuries- old printmaking techniques as well as a mastery of how to write contemporary computer programs, Lyon uses his brains, rather than his hands, to create his art. The results, a qmple dozen of which are packed into Drury’s gallery, are fascinating. The more you look, the more you see.

Occasionally, people give him a hard time about the way he makes art, Lyon said, claiming it’s the computer, not him, that’s responsible for the finished product. He begs to differ, however.

“I spend months figuring out the codes for my works,” he said, adding that every movement of the pen or airbrush is an X-Y coordinate. “I write programs that write programs.”

Lyon’s facility with computers came early. With a college degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, he went to work for his family’s cattle- hide processing business in Kansas City in 1976. While there, he developed a computerized system to facilitate the grading of hides.

That idea took off in a big way, and Lyon was able to sell his invention and go to work full time as an artist.

Dautrich/Exhibit should appeal to artistic, analytical

In addition to his architecture degree, Lyon earned a BFA in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute, and before he made art on the computer, he made it like everybody else.

“When I was a student, I stood at an easel and painted what I saw,” he said, “and I did it well.”

Talking to Lyon, however, it’s clear he’s too precise a thinker to spend his days with a brush in hand. Writing computer programs to make prints, drawings and paintings was the logical next step.

Still, history plays a role. He’s heavily influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, as well as by the 17th century French engraver Claude Mellan.

It was Mellan’s “Sudarium of Jesus” that inspired Lyon’s pen-and-ink work of his wife, Linda, a huge portrait created out of spiraling squares that begin at the center of Linda’s nose. Get up close to the work, and it’s a series of incredibly-detailed squares, but back up, and Linda’s face, more than six feet tall, comes immediately into view.

Portraiture, especially faces, makes up the majority of this exhibit, although there are several full-length representations, a couple of landscapes, and a stunning back view of a nude that’s front and center when you enter the gallery. Lyon’s parents, his wife, his son and several self-portraits are all included in the show.

Viewers will no doubt make comparisons to the work of Chuck Close when seeing these paintings and prints, but there is a difference. Lyon has his own agenda and his own techniques, although the largehead format is similar to that of Close.

This exhibit should appeal to both the artistic and the analytical mind, and Lyon believes that he has found a way to combine scientific understanding with aesthetics.

“I don’t know how to describe how I feel,” he said, “but I do feel. Also, I like figuring stuff out.”

The exhibit continues through March 26 at Drury University’S Pool Art Center, 940 N. Clay Avenue. Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday.

For more information, call 873-7263.

Camille Dautrich reviews the arts for the News-Leader.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB5Mn9A0eeE

Linda, Sandy Kemper, Mary Feigenbaum, Christine Kemper, Frank Wewers, Helen Wewers -- the champagne begins!

The group arrives at the Beach Museum of Art in Manhattan, Kansas

Group photo at the Beach (standing l-r): Bill North, Helen Wewers, Christine Kemper, Sandy Kemper, Frank Wewers, Mary Feigenbaum, Linda Lyon, Hanna Blick (reporter), Mike Lyon lying down on the job (photo: Thomas Park)

Bill North explains something or other to Sandy Kemper

Frank Wewers is blown away by a large pastel drawing

Helen and Frank Wewers with Christine Kemper

Mary Feigenbaum and Linda Lyon

Frank Wewers speeds by 'Jessica Paper Dolls' drawing (or print?)

Thomas Park (right) is happy to see us

Bill North begins a tour of the curatorial, storage, and framing areas under the museum

Christine, Mary, and Frank in one of the works on paper rooms

Sandy and Christine Kemper relax outside the Manhattan Courthouse after our visit to the Beach Museum and a quick tour of the Strecker Nelson Gallery

We arrive at Cafe Beautiful in Lawrence, Kansas

Linda and Mary at Cafe Beautiful

Interesting 'stuff' including this 16mm projector decorate the dining room (across from a hookah parlor) at Cafe Beautiful

The first of eight courses at Cafe Beautiful - egg and shrimp custard baked in a squash shell

Mmmm-mmm good! Sandy LIKES it!

Linda and Mary during first course

Christine and Helen, too!

Sandy and Frank deep in conversation

Hashi on green ceramic platters

Beautiful and delicious fruit are being served by Cafe Beautiful owner, waiter, dish-washer, Chef Ken Sukan

Chef Ken Sukan was our very gracious host

The fruit course was (temporary) sculpture and VERY edible!

the group enjoys a moment of conversation between courses

Chef Ken Sukan puts the finishing touches on a 'salad' of veggies in a cucumber roll bowl -- DELICIOUS!

A snapper shashimi was served

hamachi wrapped california rolls with grilled unagi (OMG)!

Check out that sculpted cherry tomato!

STILL having a LOT of fun halfway through the two hour service! WHAT a day! What a wonderful evening! What a great time with the best of friends!

Senior Curator of the Beach, Bill North, met us and guided the group through a tour of the permanent collection.  I THINK everyone got to see the exhibition rooms with my work, but I’m really not sure because a reporter for the K-State newspaper, Hanna Blick was waiting to interview me…  I think I talk WAY too much — she had LOTS of questions and I enjoyed looking at the work with her and describing my various processes and techniques and what interested me about each…  When we finished, Bill gave us a tour of the museum’s extensive storage for works on paper, paintings, his office which was FULL of books and articles and lots of stuff organized in piles on his desk and bookshelves and floor and everywhere — lots to look at in there!  And in one of the file drawers he showed the large 10-drawing proof sheet I’d made over several months with different approaches to “Jessica Paper Doll” — it was a thrill to see that again after some months and I appreciated it much more.  I realized that I’ve been missing it!

I was pretty tired as we boarded the van for a 90 minute drive to Lawrence, Kansas for a special dinner at Chef Ken Sukan’s ‘secret’ Cafe Beautiful.  Sandy and Christine had been raving about the Cafe for months.  Reservations must be made at least six weeks in advance.  Even though Cafe Beautiful does no advertising and doesn’t even have a sign out front, it seats only six (seven for us) and is very populer.  Now I understand ‘why’!  WOW!  Chef Sukan was born in Korea and trained there, in Japan, in China, Taiwan, France, and decided to move to Lawrence, Kansas after folding a map of the United States in half both ways and Lawrence, home to the University of Kansas, was exactly at the center.  He spends eight or nine months a year serving two to six guests in two seatings daily and the rest of the time he travels and teaches cooking and his special ‘Midwest’ sushi technique.

Cafe Beautiful shares the second floor of a downtown Lawrence storefront at 728 1/2 Massachusetts Street (785-84307423).  The other tenant is a very smokey bar aptly named Hookah House where (duh) people sit and smoke tobacco from hookah pipes, drink, and chat away.

Dinner was relaxed and elegant in eight beautifully designed courses.  Although I was exhausted when we entered, when the first course arrived I woke right up!  It was all delicious and gorgeously plated!  Really wonderful dining in an unusual setting and the best company. Chef Sukan made it all look easy and this was the perfect finish to a long and wonderful day.  Two minutes after we arrived home, I was sound asleep and felt just great in the morning (which is truly amazing given the mass quantities of champagne, wine, and sake I consumed throughout the day)!!!

THANKS so much Sandy and Christine for organizing this — you were GREAT hosts!

This and the previous painting of ‘Lee’ completed a few days ago are experiments in the sort of light and dark over mid-value drawings which were popular in Europe 400 years ago.  I’ve selected two examples from the Goldman Collection of Italian drawings.  I was lucky to see the exhibition of this wonderful collection at the Chicago Art Institute last year — you can obtain the FABULOUS catalog of the collection from Amazon.com well worth the $47 price!

My approach is very similar to the tack I took with my “Jim” lithograph — overlapping layers of line to communicate the value gradations of the image, but the paint makes these much more tactile — the paint builds a very heavy impasto as it overlaps and makes an interesting if somewhat bumpy surface — I LIKE these!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMydBVkprok

the painting begins with white acrylic paint applied to tinted paper

here the white painting is about half done

the white painting is complete

painting of black is about half-done -- LOVE those moire spirals!

detail showing the Paasche Flow Pencil painting black over heavy impasto

painting of black nears completion

the painting is complete

detail of painting

'Lee' and 'Joanne' complete

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWWuUOdYOZ0

The painting nears completion as black paint is applied over tinted paper and white paint.

'LEE' 35 x 21 inches, 2009, acrylic paint on tinted paper.

Bill North and I had some interesting discussions about ‘what is a print’ in connection with this edition. Initially I’d intended to print each sheet in colors, then draw on top in register. In the end, I chose to draw in red, blue, and black inks to produce what is to my knowledge the very first fine-art edition of drawn drawings (or prints)… In the broadest sense of the word, I think, the noun ‘print’ is synonymous with the noun ‘multiple.’ But, since this image was created on a single sheet of paper, roughly 5 x 12 feet, even the word ‘multiple’ is subject to question. BEFORE I tore the sheet apart, it was most definitely a pen and ink drawing. Once I’d torn the sheet into 45 pieces, each about 10×15 inches, it became an edition of ‘prints’ I think, even though each is an original drawing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UQz0LdcRgU

"Jessica Paper Doll" 2009, 10x15 inches, pen and ink on paper

example of a 19th Century Japanese paper doll woodcut

a contact sheet of the photos I considered for the paper doll drawing(s)

one of the (many) late mock-ups for the drawings

a sheet of 10 proofs with various approaches to the drawing - about a month of work from the first to the last

final drawing with red ink begins

final drawing with blue ink underway (blue on red)

5x12 foot drawing completed and ready to tear out the 45 'prints'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27jBIlBDtfg

from the Beach Museum of Art web site:

Figuring it Out: Prints and Drawings by Mike Lyon

April 14, 2009 – July 18, 2009

Donna Lindsey Vanier Gallery

Kansas City-based artist Mike Lyon is the 2009 Friends of the Beach Museum of Art gift print artist. This exhibition features a selection of the artist’s recent prints and drawings, as well as examples from his extensive collection of Japanese prints. Lyon earned a BA in architecture and fine art (University of Pennsylvania, 1973) and a BFA in painting (Kansas City Art Institute, 1975). In 1976 he put his career as an artist on hold and joined the family business, a cattle hide processing operation in Kansas City his great-great grandfather started. Lyon invented a computerized system to automate the cattle hide grading process. In 1978 he founded Grading Systems, a computer hardware and software design company. Longing to make art full-time, Lyon sold his business interests and returned to his studio in 1991.

Lyon’s interest in computers and machines informs much of his recent work as a visual artist. His large-scale prints and drawings (as large as 84 × 45 inches) are based on his digital photographs of the human figure and inventively merge traditional art making methods and computer technology. Lyon’s work also demonstrates his keen interest in Japanese aesthetics. For example, his bust-length portrait heads recall the tradition of okubi-e (big-head picture) images. Lyon has an abiding passion for Japanese art and culture and is an avid collector of Japanese ukiyo-e prints.

Lyon’s prints and drawings are created with the aid of a ShopBot CNC (computer numerically controlled) router, a programmable machine designed for woodworking applications. He has modified the ShopBot to create a giant drawing and block cutting machine. With data from the digital photographs, he calculates millions of lines of movement code with which to program the ShopBot. This code instructs the machine how far to move an ink pen or a router bit along the X (length), Y (width), and Z (height) axes for each mark or cut. The final images can require as many as 12 million lines of code and nearly two weeks of non-stop drawing or cutting.

“Figuring it Out” is sponsored by the Friends of the Beach Museum of Art Business Partners.

Cover of catalog from the Beach Museum 2009 exhibition

distorted panorama of exhibition

sign at front door advertising the gallery-talk

Linda with "Annette" and "Linda"

Crosby and Anthony drawings - senior curator Bill North at right

So the ‘Linda’ drawing combines some new and some old ideas and techniques. For whatever it’s worth, I have been intensely interested in ‘new’ ways to communicate image and in process. I am so highly entertained for days on end by the various means at my disposal to precipitate thoughts and ideas into ‘reality’ — from my ‘mind’ in this instance to ink on paper! From abstraction to object and, it seems to me, so very directly! Process is relatively easy to discuss — aesthetics nearly impossible, so although ‘image’ is extremely important to me, the underlying process of ‘choosing’ my images is mainly unconscious or ‘felt’ and I just don’t have a clue how to talk about that. Process for me, however, is conscious and so easier to communicate. I suppose my images of people and other stuff will have to speak for themselves (LOL)!

Late in 2004 I began to think about the ‘spiral’. Spirals seem so… Infinite! Difficult to contemplate! Contracting to the infinitessimal, expanding to the infinite, mind boggling to construct and control! My great friend, Jerry Vegder, saw images of my earliest ‘machine drawings’ and pointed me to a Jacques Mellan (1598-1688) ‘Head of Christ, Sudarium’ engraved in 1649.

Now doesn’t this just drive you MAD? I mean, it’s quite a trick to hand engrave an image like this, a single line spiraling out from the nose with the width varied to produce the various values in the image, but HOW can one define such a procedure? After worrying this over for a while (four years?), I believe that I now have it all worked out! Although generating a list of movement commands to produce a spiral of any dimensions and number of rotations was quite a stretch for me (a simple interative application of trigonometric functions readily available in worksheets and programming languages), to really prove to myself that I had it more or less under control, I designed ‘Linda’ of spirals within spirals — approximately 3,300 ‘square’ tiles (each tile approximately 1×1 inches) pave a spiral in my ‘Linda’ drawing, and each of them is itself ‘spiraled’ to produce the values which eventually read to the mind and eye as a person’s face.

Although I ‘tried’ to constrain my drawing inside the ’tiles’ in order to leave a very narrow undrawn margin around each (I considered painting these margins with narrow lines of size and then gold leaving prior to drawing, but that seemed risky as Hell for a first attempt and I decided to leave that for a future work), but I required over 12,000,000 lines of movement code and there were many small errors in my calculations, so the drawing is (aren’t they all?) imperfect and the margins between tiles vary because a ‘few’ of my drawing lines escaped the tile boundaries from time to time.

Still, it boggles my mind to consider that this drawing (and most drawings, really) are produced moment to moment, the tip of the pen rolling from place to place leaving its slender black track as evidence of a long meander.

The image was designed in 10 layers as if it were a reduction print, beginning with the darkest areas in the image, each subsequent layer is ligher in value and includes the areas covered by previous (darker) layers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbuosJE_2fs

(short video showing darkest layer of drawing underway)

You can see (if you watch the video above) that the darkest layer is drawn with the lines ‘spiraling’ very close together. Each subsequent layer is drawn the same way, except the distance between lines increases as lighter and ligher value layers are drawn. In this way, the values in the image are produced by cross-hatching, in this case the lines are all variations on the spiral theme!

I started making gridded paintings in 1992, first painting ‘visually’, as if from a still life, the colors of very simple bitmap images of my family. As I continued, I began to abstract the images into ‘paint by numbers’ monochromatic portraits in squares (each number representing a value). Later, I learned how to calculate an image using any palette of paint colors I liked — usually white, black, cadmium red, alizarine crimson, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, cadmium yellow medium, and sometimes cadmium lemon or pale (the limited palette I’d used as a student at the Kansas City Art Institute under Wilbur Niewald).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giRXf8kSyeo

“Linda” painting underway

The acrylic paints I used (from ETAC are, except for the white, trasparent pigments. The overspray from the darks really ate up the lights, and the overspray from the white ate up the darks, so there’s a huge variation in dot size and in color which I didn’t intend.

In order to get this to look ANYthing like the (wonderful) intensity of the ‘plan’ (don’t you just LOVE tiny bitmaps?), I’m going to have to knuckle down and paint the 216,000 dots by hand. Any idea how long THAT might take? Couple of weeks, I suppose… But how COOL will it be with so many little Hershey’s kisses paint dollops? Cool, I think. And I want to see that badly enough to just DO it!

So… Enough Golden fluid acrylics (so I can apply by syringe, I hope) should arrive any day now and I can get started with some more needlepoint work (now that my stocking is done) in paint instead of yarn… I’m kinda dreading this, but I WANT this painting to be ‘right’! Hopefully a GORGEOUS canvas full of bright intense colored dots will eventually become ‘real.  Maybe.

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.

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.

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!

Printing should begin on Monday!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xErK0bJhcqg

October 25-26, 2007 — first proofs of “Jim”

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…

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!

Photos from the ‘print signing’ party April 13, 2008:

Well, I didn’t so far as to actually paint this on black velvet (which would have been pretty nice in a retro-leisure-suit sort of way — but I’m just not that ‘cool’ I suppose).  So this is painted on stretched linen in transparent titanium white acrylic on a carbon black ground.  I first painted the entire canvas black, then applied many layers of white paint in order to build whiter and whiter lines out of previously painted white lines — so each successive overpainting made that area whiter and more opaque.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKalkd_FMKM

Self Portrait, 2007, 60 x 40 inches, acrylic on stretched linen

Just getting started

painting nears completion

I first painted the entire canvas black, then applied many layers of white paint in order to build whiter and whiter lines out of previously painted white lines -- so each successive overpainting made that area whiter and more opaque.

The only dark values in the painting come from the black underpaining -- nothing but successively more opaque white was used to produce the image.

Up close, it's pretty intense and interesting because of all the stringy white squiggles and circlets from which the image is constructed...

Mike with Mike in studio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtjGGkCWwlQ

panorama of Backstage Pass at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City

“Sarah” April 5, 2006, 7 x 3.75 feet, pen and ink drawing, Permanent Collection, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

“Arthur”, Oct 31, 2006, 77 x 42.5 inches, pen and ink on Rives BFK paper, private collection

Mike Sims of Lawrence Lithography Workshop with 'Arthur' -- future collaborater

Exhibition catalog cover

Roger Shimomura, Chuck Close inside catalog

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.

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
Backstage Pass exhibition catalog

Wow! What a thrill!

self portrait in gestures, July 3, 2007, ca 59 x 32 inches, acrylic on Rives BFK

painting underway -- starting to lay down the blues

detail of area around eye -- three colors down

detail of area around eye -- completed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVVqzAelb9g

In the movie and several of the photos, three colors have been painted in order: black, yellow, red. A final color, blue, is starting to go down along the left side of the portrait.

"Jim", painting completed March 3, 2007, 43 x 24 inches, acrylic on Rives BFK Exhibited in "Figuring it Out" at the Beach Museum of Art, April-July, 2009

detail of forehead and hair

early state -- yellow has been completed, red uderway

detail of eye and ear

detail of neck and shirt

early state with red uderway

early state -- closeup of red going down on yellow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f97mAYf92s

The 17 gestural values (16 from darkest to lightest in equal ‘steps’ plus blank/white) overpainted in four transparent colors are capable of producing 83,521 (17^4) unique color patterns. From some distance, the painting is a fair likeness of Jim and I like this image very much. But close up, the patterns dominate and I think they’re remarkable and intensely interesting — much more so than the image alone — quite compelling to me, really!

I’d like a better balance between these near and far views, but I suspect that viewing this sort of work up close is always going to be more exciting and thought provoking than the overall image… I’ll have to give this some more thought!

I programmed a set of the ‘gestures’ (diamonds, and squares in various sizes and an ‘X’ and a ‘+’) to be painted in order to produce the 17 tones in the painting.

"Jim" painting 80 x 44 inches (image area)

Excel spreadsheet I created to calculate value densities using 9 gestures (in rows) combined to produce 16 'tiles' (illustrated at bottom of each column) in roughly equal steps from darkest to lightest values.

screen shot of the program I wrote to apply gesture subroutines to bitmap values to produce program for CNC machine -- the program is built to move to a corner of the tile, then call a subroutine for the value which in turn calls the solenoid on/off and movement commands for one or more of the nine gestures defined to build the tile at that location. Worked very well!

detail -- forehead and hair

detail -- dark side eye

detail -- dark side face

detail -- dark side body

It’s taken the better part of a month to complete and I’ve likely now made most of the possible mistakes which show up quite painfully all over the surface. Gigantic blobs of watercolor leaking from my pigment bottle dripped onto the paper and were then blown all over the place by the air brush as it passed over the painting. Watercolor slowly clogging up the airbrush and leaving vertical ‘light’ areas in stripes. Watercolor spraying out too densely and leaving vertical ‘dark’ areas in stripes. Lines too thick. Lines too thin. Color too rich. Color too lean. The yellow layer offset a column to the left (the other colors were painted after a programming change which calculated the placement differently). Airbrush too close to the paper and too much paint volume resulted in LOTS of color blown out in tiny little splats. Dirty airbrush left broad haloes of color adjacent to lines. Lines unclear and fuzzy-looking.

Here are some details (click for enlargements) of interesting areas of the painting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFGEnbVuDTY

movie of painting underway

– Mike

PS… My friend, Jerry, just had a look at this page and phoned to say, “I should just keep my mouth shut… But… You’re totally back-sliding”. After advising me to immediately forward the image to the CIA for their use as ‘proof’ of WMD in Iran (referencing somewhat similar aerial views of Iraq offered up by the White House some years ago), he directed me to Vasarely images familiar from my childhood before (and I’m condensing here) and suggested that I get on to ‘making Art’… Yup… That pretty well sums it up, I think… OK — I’m getting on with it now…

PPS… I’ve consolidated an earlier post below:
My new 17-value airbrush characters seem to be working – now if I can only get my airbrush to not clog up after an hour or 30 minutes or 90 minutes – otherwise it’s gonna require constant supervision which ain’t worth it (and BORING)!

Here’s an image of my spreadsheet calculations of area – I’ve made a set of ‘gestures’ – diamonds, and squares in various sizes and an ‘X’ and a ‘+’:

The ‘X-area’ column is the list of gestures D for Diamond, S for Square, X for diagonals, and P for Plus and the 3-digit number is the area in thousandths that an eighth inch line produces in a 1 inch box.

These are designed to be overpainted in each of red, yellow, blue, and black according to the color and value content of the corresponding area of an image. I’ve got a sample image partially painted in yellow, blue, and red now and it’s pretty much electrically brilliant! There are 17 to the 4th theoretical color possibilities (83,000 plus variations), so PLENTY of variation!

THEN I had to write the program to analyze the image and write the ShopBot code – my code reads an initialization file I wrote in ShopBot code which defines the characters and the subroutines to call them, then the program goes on to analyze each pixel in the image and generate the ShopBot code to position the machine to the pixel and do the painting. The SO,3,1 turns on the airbrush and SO,3,0 turns it off. M2 means Move in 2 dimensions (x,y) – J2 means FAST Jog in 2 dimensions (x,y)

This is actually only the working part of a MUCH longer program – the long program gets input from a screen, checks to make sure it all makes sense, and then calls the appropriate operation, in this case the subroutine above… Here’s what the screen looks like when the program is running (just finished generating the ShopBot code for the color ‘cyan’ for a Jim Winter drawing:

COOL, eh? I added the new code onto my existing program so I wouldn’t have to rewrite all the file and form handling – can’t believe it actually works!!!

I’ve defined some subroutines named after each of the 17 possible values (00 through 16 is white through black) which call the gestures I’ve designed to produce the values — – the first routine listed below is for ‘black’ or value 16 – it calls .313” square, .438 square, .234” plus, and .338” diagonals in turn to produce the ‘shading’ in that area.:

Then I defined the movement for each ‘gesture’ – these are shown below as ShopBot subroutines – you can ‘call’ the subroutine (GOSUB D375 calls the .375 square inch diamond, for example) – the starting corner position is assumed to be in the variable “&xstart” and “&ystart” and the scale factor in &scale. Then the row and column indexes are in &rrr and &ccc variables – in a 100 row x 50 column image, for each rrr (1 through 100) I position to each column ccc (1 through 50) and draw the gestures for that position.

Finally, here’s just the very beginning of the completed code to produce 0.4” squares (&scale = .4) for a very STUPIDLY large drawing 200 squares high by 110 squares wide… Next time I’ll start a bit smaller

It goes on and on like this – two or three of these commands for each of the 22,000 squares in the drawing – then the next color paints over them, then the next color, and on and on for WEEKS!!!

But it works!!!

– Mike

Computer controlled paintbrush gizmo up and running as of 30 minutes ago!!!

Parts for airbrush assembly – the airbrush itself is just above the angle iron with the solenoid already installed. Solenoid plunger above it, little bent aluminum airbrush retaining clips above airbrush – the angle iron gets bolted into the aluminum pipe and holds the airbrush vertically in the center of the pipe – the plastic pipe shims the assembly out to proper dimension for my holder… Ink/paint bottle at left and “Z” clip to keep the plunger from falling out is next to plunger – it’s a damned simple solution given how long it’s taken me to figure out!

Parts for airbrush assembly – the airbrush itself is just above the angle iron with the solenoid already installed. Solenoid plunger above it, little bent aluminum airbrush retaining clips above airbrush – the angle iron gets bolted into the aluminum pipe and holds the airbrush vertically in the center of the pipe – the plastic pipe shims the assembly out to proper dimension for my holder… Ink/paint bottle at left and “Z” clip to keep the plunger from falling out is next to plunger – it’s a damned simple solution given how long it’s taken me to figure out!

The new paintbrush assembly almost ready for installation!

The completed assembly (minus ink bottle) is mounted in machine – the interface board came from ShopBot – it’s very simple board with five relays driven from program controlled outputs in the ShopBot controller (the ribbon cable you see accordion-folded runs from top of the board over the cable umbilical of the machine and into the main ShopBot control box… I use only one of the relays (and 24v power from the controller) to energize and deenergize my little solenoid which pushes the button on the airbrush…

I mounted the relay board onto the Z-axis of the ShopBot in a little plexi box I built this afternoon – the box should keep the board clean when I’m routing instead of painting… The cover is open at the bottom and just slides down over the plexi back in some nicely fitted grooves in the sides of the cover. You can see the brush assembly mounted into the machine at the bottom of this photo.

Here’s a view of the business-end of the assembly neatly mounted in the machine

The air hose has a quick-release at each end so it’ll be a snap to change over from painting to drawing to routing – but I’m going to need to build a 2nd generation drawing control to fit the relay board the same way and using a 24v continuous duty solenoid which I now have on hand instead of the intermittent duty 110v solenoid I used for the previous two drawings (and melted one of the coils in the process, unfortunately – that won’t happen again once I’ve converted over to the 24v device – and I won’t have to worry about 110v finding its way into the delicate electronics (or my delicate body, either)…

You can see the 24v solenoid wires (white wires) about 1/3 up from bottom left, and solenoid plunger on button of airbrush and black air hose coming in from right… Since it works in reverse of pen-lifter, I have to program a new converter before I can use it (the pen solenoid got powered when it was to STOP drawing – the brush gets powered when it is to PAINT, so my old program is reversed and I need to make a simple change in order to generate the proper code for the new airbrush… Should be testing with actual paint tomorrow!!! YIPPEE!!! But… The thing does actually WORK right now, the computer turning the airbrush off and on with command, so I’m ready to go!!!

January 24, 2007:

Yesterday and today I’ve been experimenting with the new computer controlled painting device and the results are encouraging — a few interesting problems (maybe these will turn out to be ‘characteristics’) which I hope to resolve, but — well, see for yourself (about 1 minute movie):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttc3Fd8akhA

dilute India ink spiral test with my finger for scale

concentric circles with splashes

concentric circle tests overlapped

The opening Friday, September 1 of “Mike Lyon: Large Scale Drawings and Woodblock Prints” was a pretty humongous party! I suppose more than 600 people passed through the gallery that evening between 7 when the doors were unlocked and about 9:40 when Sherry Leedy shooed the last of us out the door. I saw MANY old friends which was just wonderful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbhP6GzapK0

my VERY old friend (when I lived in New York, I occasionally walked him to pre-school), the now best selling author Seth Mnookin and his friend (they later married) Sara visited the next day while they were in town for a wedding and it was great to touch base again (photo: Jennifer Bowerman)

My 1974-1975 painting instructor, retired chair of the Kansas City Art Institute’s painting department, Wilbur Niewald, was there — he just returned from a Guggenheim Fellowship spent painting in the Southwest US. He had the most wonderful time and we’ve got a dinner planned to find out all about it. Wilbur’s close friend, another retired painting professor at the Art Institute, Michael Walling was there and bought my “Fixing Hair” print. That was very nice.

Another KCAI retired faculty member, Victor Babu (of ceramics fame) visited and really seemed to love EVERYthing! He’s an enthusuiastic guy and characterized my big “Sara” reclining nude woodcut this way: “Omenish, very very omenish — the deep-deep-darks and the figure turned away — as if she’s sad or angry and maybe she’s talking about it — but what’s she saying? She’s rolled away up there but there’s that comfortable knitted thing up front — it’s soft, but she’s turned away from the comfort thing and us and all those deep blues — oh-menish… very VERY oh-menish!” — I asked him to please write my artist’s statement! (ha, ha)!

The director of the Kemper Museum, Rachel Blackburn, was there and bought the big “Sarah” drawing for their permanent collection. That felt great, I can tell you! Doug Freed, Director of the Daum Museum was there earlier with Dr. Daum and bought bought the big “Jon” drawing for their permanent collection! Wow and double-WOW! Very validating to me that these two excellent regional contemporary art museums stepped up and collected my most recent work on opening day!

The place was a veritable BUZZ of activity all night long — people pressing their noses right up against the prints and drawings, pointing and talking and it all seemed very energetic and positive! Now I’ve settled down a bit and am waiting for post-partum depression to overwhelm me!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=033cjRyyeDs

video documents start-to-finish printing of one sheet around block four…

"Sara", 42 x 77 inch woodblock print (17 blocks) Permanent Collection, Beach Museum of Art

Sara woodcuts in press take-up drawer -- 14 of 17 blocks have been printed

Sara woodcuts in drawer after 14 of 17 blocks printed

"Sara" exhibited at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art September-October, 2006

Good lord, it’s hot in my studio! I’m working on “Sara”, a 17 block woodcut on ten sheets of 42 x 77 inch Iwano Ichibei hosho paper. Sweaty work and EXHAUSTING!!! I’m managing to print about 3 or 4 blocks per day and that’s really all I am able to manage! But I’m getting better and better at using the large press I built about seven or eight months ago, even though this is only the third edition I’ve pulled on it.

I handled registration a bit differently this time… The blocks were carved with three identical side kento, each about 1 1/2 inches long, and the center of the middle one was inscribed with a very narrow line. I used a razor blade to produce three flat edges in the deckle of each sheet (parallel to the edge of the sheet)so that they’d line up with the kento in the blocks, and I drew a short pencil line in the center of the middle ‘notch’ to be lined up with the line inscribed in the middle kento. Surprisingly, this worked very well, and I found it easy to register each sheet to the blocks, aligning the pencil mark with the inscribed line on the block. At the far edges, this resulted in about +/- .05 inch of dead on which is plenty close for the image and the eye. Given the size of the sheets I’m not sure I can do much better than that…

– Mike