Power to the Power Plants

This week's challenge was one I came up with (Laura McHugh West). I'm a mechanical engineer by training, so power plants are what we live for. Doesn't matter to us if they are wind, electricity, nuclear or solar driven - we love the power of the power.


I find it soothing to take photos of power plants and use them in my art.

For this week's challenge, I am going to show you the transformation of a photo into art in two ways. This is a little bit like when you see a picture of a mirror reflected in a mirror, and so on.


The first image is a photo I took from a train trip down the west coast in 2009. I loved riding the train for several reasons: 1) I like the train. It reminded me of trips my mom brought my sibs and I on when we were very young from Ohio to California to see my grandparents. 2) I can take photos without that dreaded distraction of driving. It does make it a bit more challenging because you are moving, but several of the photos I took on this trip ended up in my best (award-winning) art. Now that I think about it, that other art was electrical wires - power! - too! Reason #3 is that the train travels behind and into places that the regular road doesn't, so you see different things. I find those different things quite interesting.


Because the train is moving, there is no time to decide yes or no. You just point and shoot. And the beauty of digital is that you can just delete it if it is blurry, too dark, don't like it, etc.


I really liked this one, a lot. I like round things and engineering things, and things with words or numbers on them. This was all the things I love all rolled into one.

Next I used this image to make a transfer in my print-making workshop. That is accomplished by making a black and white of the image in Photoshop, printing onto plain paper using a laser jet printer (not ink jet). Then I applied gum arabic to the paper and a coating of water. I then applied litho ink with a brayer to the print on paper. The ink only sticks to the black printing, though you can use any color ink you wish. In this case, I used black for the main image of the vessel. 

I did another transfer of the gear drawing using the same technique with another drop (printing) onto the paper. I think I might have done a couple more drops of the gear in lighter blue over to the right. There may be some layers of paper I integrated using a chine colle technique too.

When the ink on the piece dried, I worked over it with red and yellow pastels to emphasize the staves and vessel number. Then I took a high-quality photograph of it.

Several months, maybe a year, later I was investigating how to do image transfers using hand sanitizer. I found the image I had printed and photographed, and thought I would try doing a transfer of it.

That method calls for printing out the image using an ink-jet printer onto overhead projector transparency plastic. The plastic is coated with an emulsion that is released with Purell hand sanitizer. You put the sanitizer onto the paper, in this case the same type of paper I originally printed on using the litho inks: Rives BFK.

Placing the transparency down onto the paper, use a Speedball rubber brayer to go back and forth over the transparency. The emulsion will transfer to the paper, much like a polaroid transfer, if you have ever done those.

In this case, I didn't reverse the image before printing onto the plastic so it is reversed from my original print. I used more pastel to emphasize the staves and lines of the vessel, in purple this time. The background was quite hazy from the image transfer in a gentle lavender. 

I loved reworking the image over and over just to see what the next iteration would look like.