Having traveled all over Utah and Colorado this past spring I was fascinated by the dramatic sky, huge thunder head clouds with rain drifting down from beneath them only to be absorbed by the dry air before it made it to the Earth. Being early spring the weather was especially dynamic, changing from snow, to rain, to hail, and back again. Gusty wind and quickly moving shadows cast across broad swaths of land as they swept over. Me, frantically booting up my phone or camera to capture the fleeting sky scapes thinking all the while how this could be expressed into relief prints.
It was after we returned home and went on one of our monthly "Full Mooners" hikes that I got the image that I chose to use for this experiment. We walked along the Angora Ridge Road to the fire lookout building perched there where we sipped on tea from thermos bottles, and nibbled cookies, sharing with friends, and watching for the full moon to rise over Mt. Freel.
As we looked across the valley a group of cumulus clouds was drifting over the peaks collecting the diminishing sunlight and painting it with a spectrum of color. Beneath these clouds there was verga, (rain that doesn't make it to the land as it is absorbed into the air before it can reach the ground) also bathed in brilliant color. This had to be my printmaking experiment, although the intense colors would make it more complicated than the stormy grey skies that we saw on our trip.
So here it is, "Virga Sunset", reduction print with six layers of Caligo Safewash ink on Mohawk Ultra Fine paper edition of ten.
Having traveled all over Utah and Colorado this past spring I was fascinated by the dramatic sky, huge thunder head clouds with rain drifting down from beneath them only to be absorbed by the dry air before it made it to the Earth. Being early spring the weather was especially dynamic, changing from snow, to rain, to hail, and back again. Gusty wind and quickly moving shadows cast across broad swaths of land as they swept over. Me, frantically booting up my phone or camera to capture the fleeting sky scapes thinking all the while how this could be expressed into relief prints.
It was after we returned home and went on one of our monthly "Full Mooners" hikes that I got the image that I chose to use for this experiment. We walked along the Angora Ridge Road to the fire lookout building perched there where we sipped on tea from thermos bottles, and nibbled cookies, sharing with friends, and watching for the full moon to rise over Mt. Freel.
As we looked across the valley a group of cumulus clouds was drifting over the peaks collecting the diminishing sunlight and painting it with a spectrum of color. Beneath these clouds there was verga, (rain that doesn't make it to the land as it is absorbed into the air before it can reach the ground) also bathed in brilliant color. This had to be my printmaking experiment, although the intense colors would make it more complicated than the stormy grey skies that we saw on our trip.
So here it is, "Virga Sunset", reduction print with six layers of Caligo Safewash ink on Mohawk Ultra Fine paper edition of ten.