When I first went to college, I wasn’t exactly the visual artistic type. Aside from the doodles that everyone draws in the margins of their notebooks, I didn’t draw much. I didn’t paint. I didn’t create visual art like that. In high school I was artistic, I was in band and played music, I just wasn’t visually artistic.
In college I had to take a fine arts credit, since I decided not to be a part of the band. I had to actually take a fine arts class, all of which are deduced down to music appreciation, jazz appreciation, and art appreciation. Going against all of my musical learning that began in the 6th grade, I decided to do art appreciation.
The format of the class was awesome. It consisted of being in a giant lecture hall of about 100-200 students and having a PowerPoint full of art that we would just discuss. Sure there were a couple of quizzes and stuff, but all in all it was just sitting and discussing a ton of different pieces of art.
And then I learned about printmaking.
Printmaking, in a generic sense, is the process of making a block (or some template medium) that you run through an inking process and then transfer to paper. Unlike other mediums you can just keep reproducing the image as well (at least until the block is worn). The trickiest part of most forms of printing is that you have to do everything mirrored, so when you place your block onto the paper it prints the correct direction. I have a couple of pictures with the blocks in them down below to help you understand what I mean.
So upon learning of this awesome form of art I went out and bought a beginner lino-cut printing set. This consisted of a couple blocks of linoleum, some ink, and a couple of chisels that are used to cut out the linoleum.
The result of my first actually decent print was a printing of the gnome child meme. Meme right here for comparison.
I since come to the realization that I inked the block pretty badly on that one. After that I produced a couple of other things, and the only other one that I really liked was a pointy-hat confused bearded guy (I should just make that the title of the picture).
Then, for a good laugh (which is the reason I create most things) I made a print of a printer. Neat.
The next significant thing I made was a garlic bread print, where there was a hot piece of garlic bread and kanji (hopefully saying garlic bread, I got it from google translate so it’s questionable). It had been so long since I produced the last print that I struggled to get the inking right, and after printing off a ton of them, I was able to get a cool looking gradient. So without further ado.
And just recently, inspired by a dumb internet meme (another main source of inspiration), I made a print of Steve Harvey that summarizes most episodes of Family Feud.
And that is all I have. If I create any new prints that I think are funny, or a significant improvement in quality, then I’ll probably post them here.
Until I post again, have a great week!
Max Endeavors 