John Marin

I'm sitting at Bard Coffee in Portland on this grey, dreary day and figured I'd post a quick update. As this week comes to an end I'm gearing up for the final two week push. I've been doing a ton of experimenting but I'm realizing that it's about time to start working on the real deal. I had to come here to go to ArtMart and procure a new brush that's low quality enough to ruin with cyanotype chemicals and to buy the paper that I'll be using for my final pieces. I was not thrilled about the prospect of driving to Portland simply to buy paper since the route from Brunswick down here has been turned into a series of road construction projects. As soon as I got here, however, I realized I've been meaning to go to the John Marin exhibit at the Portland Museum and guess what? It's free starting at 5pm on Fridays. So that was a happy coincidence! I've been sitting here killing some time so that I wouldn't have to pay to get in but am about to head over and am very excited to see what they've got in this exhibit. I did a final term paper on Marin for an art history class a year ago, but more importantly, Marin is known for his unconventional watercolors of the Maine coast. I've been going a little overboard with the watercoloring and still have not produced any samples other than the one from the last post that I'm pleased with. I'm getting there though, and am hoping this exhibit will inspire me! Marin's a cool guy...worth checking out: http://www.portlandmuseum.org/exhibitions-collections/current.shtml

And now just for kicks..a few photos that got lost in the fray from one of my trips to South Bristol, that I was extremely happy to rediscover yesterday...

maybe?

I intended to spend the week sorting through photos. I've been doing lots of that but to break up the somewhat tedious task I took breaks now and then to test out potential ways to combine watercolor with the cyanotypes. That process has been something of a struggle. Early on I was tempted to just say the photos work better on their own but I think that's an obvious and easy conclusion. While it may come to that I'm forcing myself to be a little more creative and am keeping up with the experimentation a little bit until I can make a more informed conclusion. Below is one example of the current path I'm going down in which I'm applying the watercolors at the same time as the cyanotype chemicals (before exposing the photograph). I'm intrigued by the play of the colors with the prussian blue of the cyanotype and the way I got the more expressive effects of watercolor to merge with the more crisp lines of the photograph. This is just a rough draft but I figured I'd post it as some evidence of what I'm playing with at the moment....

The Process

Step 1.

Step 2.

Step 3.

Samples

I've done a lot of experimenting and am starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of this. I had the greatest day yesterday in the process of attempting to expose and develop photos on site. I went to Simpson's Point and Harpswell to do this and got to soak up the sun at the same time my photos did. Unfortunately using salt water instead of regular water seems to turn all the whites in the photos a pale blue color. I'm still doing some research and consulting my chemistry-minded friends to figure out why this happens and if there's a way around it because ideally I would love to be able to include the specific locations in process this way. Below are two samples of some mildly successful cyanotypes (developed in clear water, not salt water). I'm also posting a few of my favorite photos from my trip to Pemaquid Point and Rockland a few weeks ago because I spent the afternoon editing through those photos.

Let the experimenting begin!

I've been messing around with the cyanotype process the last two days. It's nice to be doing a more hands on process again after working with digital files for the last few weeks. I knew there would be certain issues and so far I think I've encountered almost all of them plus some! Between photoshop and the printer freaking out on me yesterday and then sudden downpours today, it's been an interesting two days. I guess that was all necessary, though, because now I've discovered lots of things I need to figure out, pay more attention to, and play around with, so I'll go into next week with lots of exciting tests and plans to execute. Until then, happy 4th of July weekend!