Mar 2011

After Darwin: No Exception to the Rule

I spent Saturday evening tearing my printing paper to size and proofing the key block for “There is No Exception to the Rule” I’ll be sketching on the proofs to experiment with color, though at this point I’m thinking the final print will be monochrome, with a second block to add some shading. I’m also not sure how I feel about the carved lettering. It seems a bit too cartoonish. I plan to try a few proofs with handset type and decide which looks better.

Read More...
0 Comments

After Darwin: No Exception to the Rule

The first few months of 2011 have been very busy, but I’ve finally finished the drawing and started carving the key block for the second print in our After Darwin print subscription series. The print is tentatively titled No Exception to the Rule.

I was inspired by a line from
The Origin of Species which reads:
“There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair.”

My initial reaction to the text was to think of large groups of animals. I considered depicting normally solitary creatures like polar bears packed into a large mass to illustrate the idea that any creature, if unchecked, can quickly saturate its environment. I eventually decided to create a print with humanity as its subject. In the past year I’ve been looking at
James Ensor. Ensor’s prints and drawings of crowd scenes were a definite influence.

This first image shows the early stages of the drawing. I work in pencil first, then ink the lines. You can see some of my reference photos in this shot as well.



Here the drawing is about half finished. It became more challenging as the work went on to fill the space with ever smaller figures.



At last the drawing is finished!



I decided that the print should include the text, which must be written and carved backwards in order to be right-reading when the block is printed. I used a mirror to double and triple-check that I’d transcribed the text correctly.



-Ursula Minervini, 3/2/2011




Read More...
0 Comments