Cricketts Inky Art Blot

I have been working on a ton of tradigital pictures over the last 2 or 3 weeks. I had 145 proofs printed over the weekend and excitedly picked them up this morning. I have picked a handful out to be 20 x 30 photos and about 20 to be 8 x 10 photos. Tradigital art is where a computer generated image has been formed from a traditional fine art piece as it's base. I used some of my oil paintings and hand carved fine art prints as my foundation image and digitally altered them to make the final piece of work. I'm really excited about this work and the direction it is taking me in. My influences and inspiration for this work come from art movements from the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. Here are the sneaky peaks: These are going to be 20 x 30 prints:

I'm working on the peacock paintings at the moment and some relief prints. I am slowly filling in the shapes and colors of the paintings, starting from the top and working down with each color. I'm grouping them with my 8 color reduction cut relief print. Also a feather linocut and painting, both in their early stages. The linocuts below are variation experiments based on the imagery above. It still feels like I am a long way to completion, but hopefully they will pull together fast at the detail stage.

I don't know why, but I go back and forth over whether my work will be good enough to show. Maybe this is what every artist feels or maybe it is me being unbalanced. I have always been this way. When I was still a student in art school, I burnt pretty much an entire years work thinking it sucked and smashed the ceramic sculptures I had to hand. Lucky for me, half the sculptures were in storage at the school. I had not documented the paintings and wish to this day that I had. I don't know if it is nostalgia, but I think back to that work and think it was the best I have ever done. Too bad, too sad as my kids say. Next month is NadaDada and I am nowhere near finished. Actually, not one single piece is finished. Why am I so lame at deadlines? I wonder if it is possible to fill 2 rooms of a gallery with just a month to go. I have been thinking of different ways to fill the room, or to paint abstracts that could be knocked out fast... My integrity is better than that I hope, bu...

I got myself out of a rut that was setting in by painting a Monty Pythonesque fish zeppelin. It's coming along nicely and is probably my favorite painting of this series of work so far. I posted a fish snippet onto Milliande to get a little feedback, so it will be interesting to see what the folks there think. I have not finished, but I am certainly done for the night :-) Whilst working on this, I have had a second painting on the go to keep me busy while the paint is drying. Location: Twin Lakes Studio

I had printed this miniature with 5 color layers over the past couple of weeks, yesterday I added an extra layer of white to soften the edges of the feather. In the background you can see some of the second version alarm clock prints. I have also started playing around with images to make these digital prints. The glasses are a reoccurring theme.

Last week I had printed a small print to go with the relief cut series. Part of this was carved with "Softkut", an eraser type of material that is stamped rather than hand rubbed. I had also printed a small white circle made from precut relief carving block, also by stamping. Today I added a clock face to the bottom corner, over the top of the white. I am thinking of exhibiting this for Artown this July. I am helping to organize an exhibition at Wildflower Art Village for the Printmaker's Conspiracy and have quite neglected the fact I need to put some prints of my own into it! The weather is cold this morning, but I see a few signs of Spring from the window.

Due to impatience, I was unable to wait until the prints were truly dry enough to overlay with more ink. I only needed to add white to the hour glass at this point, so I threw caution to the wind and printed. I think they survived the ordeal relatively unsmudged. I am particularly pleased with the slight 3D effect. I hoped that it would work, but results are inconsistent. The pace is pretty intense at the moment and I find myself pretty tired each night from printing by hand. I have considered more than once in the last few days, that it is time to think about buying a press. I usually find the labor quite Zen like, but it is a killer when there is a deadline!

Today I would like to honor an wonderful artist called Beth from a community I am attached to called Milliande.Art Community. I have been touched by her request and I hope I can help her in her goal. Beth has been registered legally blind for many years and as her sight is decreasing she wishes to have one piece of her artwork traveling into as many countries on this Earth as possible .. a kind of legacy of her ability to see. You know how I obsess about the flags on my map @_@, well, I would like to ask a special favour of all my visitors, ESPECIALLY those who live in countries outside of the UK and USA (I think there are many of us already participating although every state is wished for, so still participate!), if they would consider making an Artist Trading Card (ATC) to trade with Beth. I have been blessed with many visitors from all over the globe and I would love you to connect with me to do this together. ATC's are artworks that are just 2 1/2" x 3 1/...