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Strength From Within
It's interesting and often unexplainable why a certain image will spark a new idea. This print began with a photograph of my model Ming in Hyde Park on a typical overcast London morning. It was badly composed, horribly metered with tonal annomalies across his face from poor developing of the negative, yet it's the one shot out of a roll of 36 that sparked an idea for a new print. The uneven developing mark across his face gave the impression of a birthmark, something that has always fascinated me since it's so strikingly visual yet can leave the person afflicted with the feeling of being literally marked from birth with and imperfection. This stigma is often something they have to live with for the rest of their lives yet it is truly only superficial and speaks nothing of the person's worth or strength of character, the inner qualities that truly define a person. So, from a poor beginning, "Strength From Within" was created. |
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| One of the first "corrections" made to this image was to (1) re-create the top of Ming's head which was cropped in the original photograph, by cloning it from another photograph. The background was deemphisized to focus attention back on the subject. |
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| The original cropping of the photograph was awkward, so... |
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(2) I again cloned Ming's lower chest and forearmes from another photograph, blending them with the primary image. (3) Two versions of the photograph were created with slightly different arm positions before I mad my final selection for the print.
The next element added was a dramatic sky consisting of two photographs taken Kane'ohe' Bay on the windward side of Oahu. Both the image of Ming and sky were etched on to the same plate and inked in two different colours by hand. The "proof" of this plate and a red spit-bite aquatint plate for the Birthmark image were printed in succession at Artichoke Print Workshop in London on their massive Rochat Etching Press, seen below. |
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| The next stage of the print's development was the addition of a Chinese Dragon drawn and printed from blocks of Bavarian limestone. I chse to use a three-toed dragon as it signifies power for the common man. |
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| "Strength From Within" was created from one photo-etching plate, one spit-bite aquatint plate, six lithographic stone drawings and one photo-litho plate impression. Printed at both Artichoke Print Workshop in London and the Honolulu Printmakers Workshop, Honolulu, Hawaii in 2005. |
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