In 1991 I was in Japan with a group of US, Canadian, and European karate guys led by Tsutomu Ohshima.  Ohshima Sensei organized a fabulous and exhausting tour which included visits to Hiroshima, Miyajima, Kyoto — we met and watched demonstrations by elderly masters of kyudo, judo, kendo, were wined and dined in traditional Japanese fashion, and ended in Tokyo where we participated in the 60th anniversary of the karate club at Mr. Ohshima’s alma mater, Waseda University.

One evening we dined at a wonderful sukiyaki restaurant where groups of four or five of us sat around low tables with hot braziers.  I must have appeared to be the senior in our group,  because our very young waitress singled me out to receive instructions for preparation of our meal.

My Japanese is limited to counting, karate words, printmaking words, “please, thank you, excuse me, where is the …”, etc.

Wakarimas-ka? (do you understand?).
Wakarimas (I understand).
Wakarimas-sen (I do not understand).

The movie, “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” had premiered a year or two earlier and the youthful fad of that time was to append a sarcastic “NOT” to the end of statements — like — Don’t worry, I love you… NOT!  So this waitress, pointing with hashi (chop sticks) to each different meat and vegetable and to the metal pot of boiling broth in front of us gave long and detailed explanation of each step.  A full minute or more of monologue and I didn’t understand a single word of what she’d said, but I listened intently and, at the end, she asked, “Wakarimas-ka”?  Now THAT was something I understood and, Bill and Ted style, I made my first effective joke in Japanese. YES, I replied with enthusiasm — “HAI!  Wakarimas… SEN!”  And our pretty young waitress in her beautiful traditional kimono fell over on the floor laughing, tears streaming down her cheeks, her hand fluttering in front of her teeth and another waitress, ancient and wrinkled scooted over, scolded her, shooed her away and looked after us for the rest of the evening with boring decorum.  Sigh.

So I’m reminding you that, although this LOOKS a bit like an oddly colored photographic portrait of a talking head, it is NOT.  It is ‘merely’ a collection of completely abstract lines and squiggles drawn in ink on tinted paper using many ink-pens and NOWHERE is there a face, a shirt, an eye, a button, a tooth, anything plaid, etc.  ONLY ink on paper!  But organized in such a way that, in spite of the completely non-representational nature of the marks, their whiteness and blackness, the unexpected pinkness of the paper — our eyes and minds effortlessly re-integrate all this into “Joel” – if you knew Joel, you’d recognize him.  It’s the same with all portraits, paintings, sculpture where there’s some meaning encoded — although there is NOTHING human-like in the ink, paint, marble, etc — our minds are expert at associating our visual experience with things we ‘know’ and in a weird way we think we are seeing, in this instance, a person.  Just sayin…  This is Joel…  NOT!

The white ink on this rose tinted paper POPS. I prepared the large sheet by painting it with several washes of quinacridone red pigment plus a bit of carbon black pigment mixed into water. I drew the brightest 2/3 of the image with white ink squiggles and the darkest 2/3 of the image with black ink squiggles. So 1/3 of the image is white line over rose tinted paper, 1/3 of the image is black line over rose tinted paper, and 1/3 of the image is white over black over rose tinted paper.

"Joel", completed Mar 20, 2011, 87 x 45 inches, white and black ink on tinted watercolor paper

My model, Joel Goldman, is an attorney turned novelist. We’ve known one another since childhood. He’s a great guy – clever, articulate, sarcastic, interesting. You can see all that and more in the portrait, I hope. He likes the drawing. The other night, we had dinner with his sister, Susan Tivol, who, it seemed to me from her reaction to seeing an iPhone image of Joel, didn’t much care for it.  I think it was the particular image, catching Joel in mid-something she (subtly) objected to — and this is a shame, really, because she has a GREAT face and I’ve been trying to convince HER to model for me. Maybe SOME day… Meanwhile, if you’re interested in Joel’s books, have a look at these:

Technically, this is another drawing in light and dark on mid-value ground. I continue to follow some giant footsteps including:

I spent several months working on the image and calculating all the miles of ink squiggles – this one was a huge challenge for me and I made a number of experiments in advance of my final push to complete “Joel” (see previous articles). The actual execution of the drawing took only about 230 hours. Here are some photos of the work in progress…

detail of white/black interaction

detail of white/black interaction

March 10 - second layer of white contours goes down

March 14 - one more day of white ink

March 15 - black ink begins

March 19 - as the sun rises - about 20 hours of drawing still ahead.

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

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'

This turned out to be a MUCH more difficult installation than the first. The new machine is almost twice the size of my first — all the heavy pieces had to be carried up three flights of stairs and then bolted together like a giant erector set. The rails of each axis had to be carefully and precisely leveled and fastened exactly parallel — not an easy task with bubble levels and ultimately I bought a laser level which made the process possible — until then, I was really starting to pull my hair out (and I don’t have that much hair to pull anymore)! The bed and vacuum plenum engineering was much more problematic than I’d imagined because they had to be built up from several interlocking panels. In the end, it turned out that there were a number of electonic and electrical problems which I had a LOT of trouble diagnosing and repairing, so most of my work these past several months has been more engineering than art, but the machine is FINALLY complete and I am ready now to make some larger and more complex art.

New CNC machine with bed complete and two of three vacuum plenum panels installed. Holes cut in bed (one visible in foreground) for hookup to vacuum which provides suction through trupan ultra-light MDF surface).

One of the three 4 x 5 foot plenum panels with waffle cuts for vacuum distribution

detail showing vacuum waffle cuts on bottom surface

using CNC it was so very easy to cut an ellipse to perfectly fit the angle of the hose hook-ups!

vacuum plenum complete

3-zone control of vacuum to table via simple knife gate valves

vacuum hose hooked up to fitting on table bottom

New CNC machine complete with table planed flat. All that's left to do now is install compressed air hookup for painting and SWEEP UP!!!

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

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

detail

Framed drawing in studio (plastic wrapped)

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…

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.  Here’s a short movie from my first attempt (which was torn to shreds by the pen — the paper stretched, wrinkled, then tore under the repeated drawing) — shot March 6, 2006:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL3Hyd2MIi8

I assembled her two weeks ago (took the better part of a week) and she went to work almost immediately! I got her from a North Carolina company called ShopBot Tools which has sold about 3,000 such ‘assistants’ (actually low-end CNC machines), mostly to sign-makers, I think, in the last 10 years. She can carve about anything up to about 4 feet by 8 feet (a sheet of plywood) and up to five or six inches thick and can follow my drawings with an accuracy of a few thousandths of an inch!

I’m pretty ecstatic really, and I’m feeling that I am now able to precipitate image ideas almost directly from my mind to wood! For the way I work, this is like a dream come true! Very liberating!

Among the 24 blocks produced yesterday were the ten for this portrait of my son, Max. What a beautiful face he has as he seems to me to peer into an uncertain future with mixed courage and trepidation.

"untitled (Max)", March 26, 2004, 10 x 7.5 inches, woodblock print from 10 cherry plywood blocks, dry pigment and neri-zumi in paste of rice starch on Iwano Ichibei hosho, 24 sheets

surfacing the 4 x 8 foot bed of the new ShopBot CNC machine on the 3rd floor studio