Mike Lyon

Painting Drawing Printmaking Japanese Woodblock Printing Furniture Lighting

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“Linda” 77×46 inch pen and ink drawing in spiral

July 31, 2008 By Mike Lyon

Today, after 11 days non-stop drawing, I completed a large pen and ink drawing of Linda which sorta ‘marries’ my long interest in tiles and spirals with the squiggly cross-hatched drawings of recent years. I think it’s pretty successful and depicts my angelic wife (who doesn’t much mind my long hours in studio) with a […]

Filed Under: Drawing, Featured, Video Tagged With: Abstraction, Aesthetics, Engraving, Jerry Vegder, Ken Knowlton, Machine Drawings, MOMA, Pen and Ink Drawing, Pencil, Precipitate, Self Portrait, Spiral, Spirals, Sudarium, Tiles

Crosby watercolor and ink 90 x 45 inches

November 26, 2007 By Mike Lyon

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.  They loved this portrait and it was later purchased by the museum […]

Filed Under: Drawing, Featured, Painting Tagged With: Arches, Black Ink, Crosby, Flat Colors, Frisket, Gizmo, Hot Iron, Hot Press, Kemper Museum, Monotypes, Museum Of Contemporary Art, Patron Of The Arts, Pen, Pen and Ink Drawing, Self Portrait, Watercolor Paper, Watercolor Washes

Self Portrait, painting in acrylic on linen, 60×40 inches

October 13, 2007 By Mike Lyon

Today I completed something a little bit ‘different’… Looking back to the velvet paintings displayed at the 5 and dime when I was a kid — maybe they’re still up there today — hula girls, Elvis in all his glory, typical 60’s kitch in stiff opaque color practically glowing out of that black-black velvet… Well, […]

Filed Under: Painting, Video Tagged With: Black Velvet, Canvas, Carbon Black, Elvis, Linen, Painting Acrylic, Portrait Painting, Retro, Self Portrait, Titanium, Transparent, Velvet Paintings, White Paint

43 x 27 inch acrylic on BFK painting (self portrait improved)

July 10, 2007 By Mike Lyon

This painting in acrylics on BFK paper went through several states and many weeks before arriving at an acceptable result.  Here’s the final state of the painting: BFK is a very soft paper — because the tip of the flow-pen actually touches the surface, the paper becomes abraded (deeply abraded) as the tip repeatedly passes […]

Filed Under: Drawing, Painting Tagged With: Acrylic Painting, Airbrush, BFK, Chalk, Impasto, Painting In Acrylics, Portrait Painting, Renaissance, Self Portrait

54 x 29 inch gesture painting (self portrait)

July 3, 2007 By Mike Lyon

Another ‘gesture’ painting — this one uses the same gesture character set as my earlier (and smaller) airbrushed “Jim”, but the gestures are slightly larger (1/4 inch squares) and are painted using the Paasche Flow Pencil, so the tip touches the paper. It’s painted on Rives BFK, so the paper surface has been abraded quite […]

Filed Under: Painting, Video Tagged With: BFK, Character Set, Gesture, Paint, Paper Surface, Pencil, Photos, Portrait Painting, Self Portrait, Stroke

Self Portrait

January 15, 2004 By Mike Lyon

Another mostly failed attempt to realize a full-color woodcut. The source was a water-color self portrait I painted a few years ago. The reduction print was carved from three blocks in various reductions. A ‘yellow’ block was carved and printed three times, a ‘blue’ block was carved and printed four times, and a ‘red’ block […]

Filed Under: Painting, Woodblock Tagged With: Color Woodcut, Gradations, Hosho, Reds, Self Portrait, Variations, Water Color, Yamaguchi

Do it your self portrait

May 28, 1997 By Mike Lyon

Produced for a Hand Print Press print exchange (and summarily rejected SO unfairly by the short-lived curatorial committee) the text reads: Use a razor knife and straight edge to cut out the colored squares along the black lines. Paste 143 yellow squares over the 143 ‘M’s, 160 magenta squares over 160 ‘I’s, 186 red squares […]

Filed Under: Lithography Tagged With: Curatorial Committee, Cyan, Mike Lyon, Portrait Artist, Portrait Of The Artist, Razor Knife, Self Portrait, Straight Edge, Yellow Squares

64 embedded self-portraits

May 28, 1996 By Mike Lyon

Here was an experiment to see if I could juggle the big image made of smaller images made of smaller images. The small self-portraits are made of 25 pieces, each of which can carry any of 5 values of lightness or darkness. This was the practice piece for the big self portrait you’re about to see…

Filed Under: Lithography Tagged With: Embedded, Self Portrait, Self Portraits

6,401 self portraits

May 28, 1995 By Mike Lyon

The image was lifted from a 1988 photo-ID. The title is derived from the number of self-portrait images used to make the image of me, plus 1 for the complete image itself. Since the image lives in a space 40 cells high by 40 cells wide, it’s 40 x 40 = 1600 cells in the image. Each of […]

Filed Under: Lithography Tagged With: Black And White, Ink, Portrait Images, Rectangle, Self Portrait, Self Portraits

1996 Embedded Self Portrait tiling

May 28, 1995 By Mike Lyon

This self portrait was pretty much the end of the series. I produced an edition of 25 of these for the Hand Print Press, a print making cooperative which organized an annual exchange. Similar to 64, but much more ambitions, I was very happy (and very lucky) to keep the four color plates and one large etched […]

Filed Under: Lithography Tagged With: Embedded, Master Printer, Portraits, Self Portrait, Variation

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  • Beach Museum Catalog
  • Grabado y Edicion No 36
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  • Kemper Museum Catalog
  • Kyoto Catalog
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  • Post Digital Printmaking (Chapter 10)
  • Technical Development

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