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The Hangin' Tree
Published: 2007-06-22 00:07:28 +0000 UTC; Views: 17392; Favourites: 412; Downloads: 0
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Description
Another etching from '04Here I really went crazy using my fingerprints to help etch in the dark textures around the plate to form the hill the tree stands on and the strange sky without it seeming too thought out. Then i just went ocd on the tree. i really love sketching them out with their twisting gnarled branches winding and twisting their way up.
Again I used standard black printers ink with brunt umber oil paint mixed in for the pigment
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Comments: 89
Thank you! I only hope you didn't leave disappointed
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I don't know what it is that attracts me to this piece. I love the simple texture it has with your fingerprints used (which I will say is an ingenious style and method). But it's also the content of the image in itself. This old and worn tree I see sitting on a hilltop where the hangings happen, and the heads remain, warning thieves and pillagers from this far off simple little town.
I absolutely love it. 
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As difficult as it may be, I commend you on your success, because this piece is perfect in it's balance of appeal/revulsion. I hope you can find the time to get more of this style done, I'd love to see it.
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Thank you very much!
The attraction you have content-wise is something that I had been working a LOT on a few years ago (and will again when i can find some time to get some more fine art cranked out). I was and still am very interested in the idea of the sublime, the idea of things which we should find repugnant and repulsive, yet are attracted by them instead. The whole beauty / disgust balance. It's damned hard to figure out and actually pull off... I'm just damned glad it worked to some degree in this instance
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I love the effect of using your fingerprints. 
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Well, thank you.
Unfortunately, I don't have any info readily at hand that I can just point you to. It's damned hard to do outside of a structured environment and requires a lot of equipment and a well-stocked studio space. It used to use a lot of carcinogenic materials and very dangerous acids, but recently there have been some new methods and materials developed (such as an acrylic emulsion to replace the asphalt like mixture used for years).
I would suggest hunting up articles on the net for general info on it and if you really want to give it a try, see if you can find an etcher in your area. That failing, you can do what I did and take a class in it 
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WOW! This is amazing! Loved the fact that you used fingerprints to make it. ^__^
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i dunno why but when i see your dev, somehow it feels like a potrait of this rotten world
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Thank you... and perhaps it's the umbers used in printing it on top of the textured look etchings leave on the paper along with the tree... you see tree you think wood
As for the head, when i actually put it in, I was working this piece into a series i was doing and it was to be a dolls head. However, it's not evident (no important) that was my intent and as the piece it's self goes, a real human head would work just fine as well. It is what ever you see it to be
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wonderful!! well, a doll is a mini-human *my own thought*
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thumbprints! how creative! i seriously thought you had just etched lines, but when i looked deeper at them i realized what they were! the sky and earth really create balance around the tree - which is amazingly drawn btw. i really like the small touch of the haphazardly drawn border as well. it really plays in with the kind of chaotic and dark (almost psychotic i'd say ^.~) style that you have going on - and that the light yellowish creme background is helping.
great peice! and congrats on the dd. you totally deserve it.
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Thank you very very much! Just logging back in now, I was floored to see I got a DD!
As the tree and all is concerned, i was a touch psychotic i think when i did it... many long sleepless nights in the studio with wondrous chemicals can do great things to ones mind set
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wow! that's an amazing story! i love to hear the way people's minds work, and i just got the inside scoop of a wonderful artist's! Being a little psychotic really seems to make great art right?
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It helps about 50% of the time... don't ask me about the other half
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A beautifully done piece.
I really love the 'spider-web' quality of the upper-most branches.
This has just the perfect amount of light and dark.
A very well deserved DD.
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Again, thank you very much... I was looking at a lot of works by Steven Gammel and there was one drawing he had done with the woman with her hair all tangled up in all these branches. That plus his spidery web like lined that find there way into a lot of crevasses in his work was really influencing me at the time.
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a wonderfully rendered work and a well-deserved DD!
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the title reminds me Queens Of The Stone Age song :]
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this is astonishing.
your style is really something.
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I despise etchings. Not the finished product - I managed to end up with a respectable elephant with that technique - but the process is abysmal. At least it was with the ink I was using. Drying in a matter of seconds, and then whenever you go to press the damn thing, someone else has messed up the alignment of the press...
But lovely detail on the trunk! (Heh, the same could be said for my elephant. (would you believe I loathe puns?))
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I must be your opposite then... I'm in love with process. If the process could in any way be categorized as obsessive, methodical, and deeply involved, then I'm all over it 
Of course, I didn't have the problems you had with drying ink (mix in some oil paint and the ink will take hours to days to dry
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The fingerprints are a wonderful touch. Definitely digging hte texture here. The tree is nothing short of spectacular. I feel like I could stare it it for hours letting my eyes wander all over the bark and those lovely gnarled branches.
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I love gnarled trees... i could lose my self in just making them
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Wow, those fingerprints really make it stand out quite nicely. I very much like the texture it adds to the image... and I think I might want to try this now, after seeing alot of these older images you've posted. I really like this one, though the hanging baby head is rather oddly mixed in. It might have been a bit more disturbing if it were growing out of the tree. The branches and execution of all this is very impressive to me.
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you might be right... the head was almost an afterthought and it was more supposed to be a dolls head, but the print was a touch too small and the details got blurred. Glad I could inspire you to try something new
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