Sunday, April 20, 2008

Selah

The past one week has been absolutely crazy with a rush of assignments, 1 take-home exam, plus 1 class test. Last monday, i had a 25% tax assignment due, followed by a 50% a trademarks take-home exam paper on wed. On thursday, I had to finish up my online hurdle admin law test. On the same day, my admin law assignment was due. On friday, i had an EPM tutorial. There were marks for class participation which means that I had to finish up my tutorial work. To top that off, there was a class test on that day itself. Saying that my week was stressful is an understatement. I finally rested over the weekend. The weekend has been good and refreshing. I slept for 11 hours straight yesterday. Absolutely blissful.

Anyway, i recently spotted a particular piece of art that i really like. It uses a drypoint technique. I was absolutely fascinated.

Extracted from wikipedia
[edit] Drypoint
Main article: Drypoint
A variant of engraving, done with a sharp point, rather than a v-shaped burin. While engraved lines are very smooth and hard-edged, drypoint scratching leaves a rough burr at the edges of each line. This burr gives drypoint prints a characteristically soft, and sometimes blurry, line quality. Because the pressure of printing quickly destroys the burr, drypoint is useful only for very small editions; as few as ten or twenty impressions. To counter this, and allow for longer print runs, electro-plating (here called steelfacing) has been used since the nineteenth century to harden the surface of a plate.
The technique appears to have been invented by the Housebook Master, a south German fifteenth century artist, all of whose prints are in drypoint only. Among the most famous artists of the old master print: Albrecht Dürer produced 3 drypoints before abandoning the technique; Rembrandt used it frequently, but usually in conjunction with etching and engraving.

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Here's an example of an artpiece using drypoint technique. Nice??!?

I'm thinking of picking up a brush and start painting using watercolours sometime this week. Im scared...havent painted for ages~!

3 comments:

nads said...

me likee the painting!!! you should paint joanne!=) i miss painting too but don't miss cleaning up after=( so now i just use colour pencils.

Joanne Khoo said...

colour pencils???

haha...i dont even own colour pencils~!

Yeah, im thinking of doing some watercolour...still finding inspiration plus time. WIll probably try to do a piece by end of next week =)

Anonymous said...

hey jo,
did u know albrecht durer has an interesting story! he was one of two brothers who were apparently both v gifted at art but came fr a v poor family..
he and his brother drew lots or something like tht to decide who should go work in the coal mines in order to support the other brother through art school. and after the first brother had made it big, he would support the other brother through art school.
so albrecht got to go.. but after he finished, his brother's hands were too broken from digging coal for him to ever paint or draw again. so it's about how his brother made the ultimate sacrifice.
one of albrecht's famous works is "the praying hands" picture.
haha okay tht's a very potted summary. cos i heard a sermon in church about it! (: