Some New Potato Prints

Untitled 31, ink on Twinrocker paper; 2 panels, each 15 x 7 1/8 in.

I worked on these prints during the same recent session that I made the cardboard print From a Yellow Circle. I had a lot of blue and yellow ink on my palette from that project, so I added the third primary, red, in order to have a wider range of color. Sometimes I want to keep things very simple, as with this diptych: just one circle per panel. I used the same piece of potato, cut into an approximate circle, for each panel, dipping them differently into the ink. Now here's a technical term: I schmooshed colors together. 

Untitled 31 detail

I realized it might be helpful to show some details of these prints. Here you can see the complexity of color, all chance happenings.

Untitled 32, ink on Twinrocker paper, 14 x 10 in.

This print began its life as a horizontal image, then I mistakenly overprinted the yellow circle and put the blue one too close to it. I happened to turn it vertically and thought it worked this way.

Untitled 33, ink on Twinrocker paper, 6 5/8 x 15 in.

Untitled 33, detail

Here, a bar and circle, a bar and triangle. I have a lot of tear-off pieces of paper from my drawings, which is why you see quite a few prints on Twinrocker paper. It's a handmade watercolor paper and I like its texture and weight for potato prints.

Untitled 34, ink on Nishinouchi paper, 20 x 14 in.

This piece might be a little too much like a smiley face, but if so, it's a wry, off kilter smile.

Untitled 35, ink on Masa dosa paper, 17 x 22 1/2 in.

Long shapes dipped into color curve and float down the sheet of paper, the darkest red adding weight at bottom.

Untitled 36, ink on Masa dosa paper, 15 1/4 x 10 3/4 in.

Untitled 36, detail

I think this is a little to Christmas-y, but I like the transparency of the triangles as they sit above the red line. 

I put the new prints up in the studio with a couple of earlier ones, and alongside some hooked wool drawings, to give a sense of their relative sizes. I think there's a similar sensibility, a feeling of playfulness, in the hooked wool drawings and potato prints.