Butterfly Book

These two images are a part of my new project - the series of butterfly related prints that will be collected into a folio (with a total edition of 10 folios). So far I think I'm going to stick to etching as the medium. It is very versatile and I like the idea of the uniformity of the small rectangles.

The top image is another version of Intellect and Optimism Create Butterflies (after Goya) [see previous post]. I used two plates. The first plate was an aquatint printed in yellow. After it dried, I printed the second plate, a drypoint, to create the black lines on top of the yellow. Lastly, I hand-painted areas light yellow and white-yellow. I really like painting on prints, which is something that an artist who is strictly a printmaker and not a painter might not do. I think of all those manuscript illuminations from the Middle Ages and engravings that were hand-colored. It is more like planting flowers as opposed to oil painting, which is more like turning soil for me. The image makes me think of Paul Klee in its playfulness and handling of shape, line, and space.

The bottom image, Butterfly/Hands, is a drypoint. The visual vocabulary is pared down as the mass of the fingers relate to the area of the butterfly wings. Fingernails play off the markings on the butterfly. They also look like the wholes cut out of paper to make a snowflake. The combination of nature and feminine form relate to O'Keefe.

The National Gallery has great virtual tours of art, by the way.