Reginald Baylor is a local Milwaukee artist who is known for a Pop style. Many times the remnants of Milwaukee’s heavy segregation is seen in his work. For example in the piece I took inspiration in, White Woman, there a woman with heavy African-American features, such as the afro and lips but she is white. Many times Baylor has stated that this is his way of showing how irrelevant race and more so skin tone is because by easily making this African American women white, we are all confused but it shows how easy it was to change it, how irrelevant it is.
However the certain qualities I want to mimic from Baylor have to do more with his style. Baylor is known not only for his intricate line work that usually fills up all the space in his pieces but also his use of shape especially geometric shape. The way I want to incorporate this into my work is in the halo that I want my female subject to be encapsulated in. As in Baylor’s White Women, I only want her to be visible from the neck up and I want to create further emphasis on my female subject by making all the details from the halo orbit her. Although in White Woman Baylor did not intend to create a halo when he did the afro but he did intend to emphasise the woman’s appearance which is exactly what I want to do. The other aspect is I want to add geometric shape but I want to keep it to simple small circles since I think by having them be uniform I will be able to create a more aesthetically pleasing look, that doesn't distract from my female subject. Overall I just want to utilize small features from Baylor’s work. |
The process of printing is one that will always take many trials. At first I would get very patchy prints, half the piece was not as inked as the other. To fix this I would just go back and add a lil more ink in those problematic areas. Still at one point I got a very faint print, which was a little puzzling, still I thought perhaps the printing press needed to have a little more pressure cranked in. Another huge problem was essentially many times the prints would not to a full extent pick the ink from the stippling which was a key point in the piece to create value in the flowers. Ultimately a combination of the pressure and ink would help create the final two prints which had the right amount of value in the right areas.
|
Watercolor is a medium that I have very little experience in and everytime I do utilize it, it doesn’t have the best results. Still this time I was determined to get the correct look. That is why I decided to do a trial run with one of my prints. Not only did I try to figure out which hues would create the color scheme of my piece, as seen in the halo, but also how to do the face. Getting the correct skin tone was something that was very difficult for me, especially since watercolors don’t necessarily blend like acrylic. Still I knew that I had to start with washes, ultimately I realized unlike acrylic where I could pack on the same hue to try to correct it, with watercolor the key was less is more. Not only that but I got a general idea that brown, with a bit of orange would help to create more shading then just trying to add darker variations of orange hues. Overall I took the time to see what would really work when watercoloring.
|
SuccessesMy primary inspiration for this work was Paul Gauguin for both the religious topic he is depicting in La Orana Maria but also the color scheme he is known for. In my piece I also take a woman of color and juxtapose her in a religious setting somewhat similar to that of a holy card. In doing so not only do I bring out the the key factor of recognizing women and their efforts, as holy cards usually have saints that are bought for their protective features that make them celebrated figures. This connects to Paul Gauguin as he took Mary and Jesus and made them Tahitian, and employed a religious theme by adding Halos to them. The other connection was in the color scheme Paul Gauguin usually works with warm colors, especially in his pieces that depicted Tahitian women. This was overall very similar in my piece not only in the coloration of the skin tone but in the flowers and general background too.
Another success was just overall connecting this piece to my previous pieces especially my last drypoint. In my previous drypoint Beautiful Little Girl, I utilized my sister and not only that but I also put her amongst a background of cempazuchitl. That means that again I used a subject that was close and meaningful to me but that they were young women of color that I identify with. This not only shows that I am starting to make a more solid theme of trying to celebrate woman but that I have a common motif of the cempazuchitl. |
FailuresDoing drypoints is always a bit difficult because it is almost as if you are working with pencil and paper. This is in the fact that the line work is very similar yet the plastic surface and drypoint tool give you minimal control. Keeping that in mind I feel like many times my etching is very rough which translates to the lines in my work being very rough. This is especially clear in small details like the circular pattern which looks sloppy mostly because you can tell where I had to go over it multiple times. This is something that I think is fixed by just having more practice with this medium.
Another place of improvement would be in my connection to Reginald Baylor which now in hindsight seems very superficial. Of course Baylor’s calling feature is in the fact that he does a lot of line work and that he uses geometric shapes and forms. I thought that by similarly utilizing a circular shape recurrently through my piece I could create a solid connection. Still I feel like I could have added some more intricate line work to solidify that connection. |