portland

Digital Photos, Fall 2020

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Some recent digital photos, taken in Portland.

Photos, 35mm, Fall 2020

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I’ve recently learned to develop black and white film, so I’ve been shooting a lot of 35mm photos and developing/scanning/processing the rolls myself in my studio. I’ve also been practicing pushing the film to higher ISOs to make the images really grainy and contrasty and I’ve been happy with the results. Here are a few recent shots. These were shot on a Ricoh AF-40 and a Canon P with a 50mm lens, using various B&W films.

Photos, May 2020

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35mm photos shot with Kodak Colorplus 200 film on an Olympus OM-2S camera. May 2020 in Portland.

Half-frame Photos, July 2020

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Some half-frame photos from a roll I shot in Portland in early July 2020.

Process Post - "Salut! V" coasters

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I contributed 6 drawings on coasters to Nucleus Portland gallery’s “Salut! 5” group show which opened on June 12th. I took a few photos while I was making them so I’ve put together a short post to explain the process.

Before starting on the coasters I made a small ink/gouache drawing of a person sitting on a roof looking up at the sky (fig. 1). I wasn’t planning on using that as the basis for all my coaster drawings, but after I made it I thought it would be fun to make variations of it with different things in the sky, and decided that would translate well to the coasters.

Since it was important to make the parts that were the same across all the coasters be as identical as possible, I did a graphite transfer to make the pencil lines on each blank coaster. To make the transfer I traced the preliminary drawing onto a piece of printer paper and then covered the back of the paper with graphite. Then I put the tracing on top of the blank coaster, graphite-side down, and traced the drawing (pushing down fairly hard). The result is that the lines get transferred in graphite onto the coaster, like a carbon-copy. (fig. 2)

After that was done I traced the pencil lines in waterproof black ink (fig. 3), which I did with a nib and brush. It was important for the ink to be waterproof because otherwise adding color on top would make the lines run.

At this point I began adding color to all of them at once, and they were all finished at more or less the same time. I used colored ink, water, and white acrylic gouache which I mix with the ink. After I finished them all, I sprayed them with a matte varnish to even out the sheen and hopefully give them some protection. (Even though these are coasters, I think it’s safe to assume these are not at all waterproof.)

Well, that’s the whole process. You can see the finished product here (fig. 4). Also check out the other coasters from the show online at Nucleus Portland’s website. As usual there is a lot of excellent work in the show.

Photos, late March 2020 pt. 2

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Some 35mm photos from a walk I took in late March, about a week into “social isolation”. Shot on Fuji Xtra 200 film with Fujica Auto-M camera.