I finally started the carving process. In fact, it goes pretty quickly with the fairly simple designs I have so far. And they’re all small, approximately 4″x6″.

I bought 3 different materials to carve, all made by Speedball: 1) the traditional lino block (linoleum mounted to a wooden block); 2) Speedy Cut block (off white, rubber/eraser-like substance); and 3) Speedy Carve block (pink rubber/eraser-like material). The Speedy Cut is a slightly smaller block – 4″x5.5″ which required some modification to the design so it would fit. There’s one more, similar product, made by Utrecht that I haven’t tried yet. In fact, it was a Utrecht article I read that turned me on to try block printing, in the first place. They seem to carry a variety of sizes that are mounted and unmounted. More research left to do!

Carving the rubber/eraser-like blocks was the easiest for me. However, it’s easy to gouge out sections of the rubber and cut way deeper than you need. I’m not sure how that will affect the printing. Carving the lino block was harder for me to control the cuts. Perhaps that’s because I had forgotten the TIP: heat up the lino block with an iron before starting to carve. Since I hadn’t done that, the blade would occasionally skip away from me and nick an edge or two (and my finger once). However, once I had the design roughly cut out, I had a much easier time carving down further.

At this point, I have carved a design into each of the materials. I probably like the pink stuff the most. I also noticed that the white, Speedy Cut block seemed to flake as I worked with it. Almost felt like pieces were disintegrating, to a degree. I don’t know that this material will last as long as the other two once I start printing.

It’s taken me longer than I expected to get this project started. I’ve had a number of ideas, some of which seem to work

Squares

very well and others that just haven’t looked good at all. Now I’ve finally got several designs that I’m basically happy with, especially the designs with geometric shapes – such as the circles and squares.

Next step – carving!

I hope to get that process going soon.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. Sorry about that. Winter has been a struggle here in PA, as in many other areas in the northeast. I haven’t been out shooting very much which tends to make me cranky. But I did make it to the Flower Show in Philadelphia with my family and took a lot of point-and-shoot photos, which felt great.

I will soon embark on a new artistic endeavor, known by several names: block printing, lino printing, and relief printing. It’s all the same thing, as far as I can tell. Think of it as creating your own rubber stamps to create art. I’m still gathering supplies and ideas right now. I bought a handle, carving blades and a few practice pieces. Ordered an actual starter kit that has a tube of black ink, the rubber roller to spread the ink (called a brayer), an inking tray, another handle and some duplicate carving blades. With two handles and multiple blades, I won’t have to switch blades constantly, just which handle I’m using. It seemed like a good idea.

I’m pretty excited but also a bit intimidated by it as I never considered myself much of an “artist.” Drawing and creating from scratch doesn’t come easily to me. I’ve seen some work online by incredibly talented (and patient) artists using this printing process. Their designs can get quite intricate. I plan to start off slowly and on a small scale, building up from there. Perhaps creating some collages, in addition to single subject prints.

I’ve been bugging a coworker for information, suggestions, and general thoughts. Hopefully she wasn’t too annoyed with all of my beginner questions. I’ve been told this gets pretty messy and I’m not ready for that just yet. But since I don’t have the ink or anything to print, I have time to prepare and gather newspapers to cover the table (and floor underneath).

We’ll see where this goes. Stay tuned…

The poster has arrived! It’s really cool to see it in print. Available directly through the Mt. Airy Learning Tree (MALT), you can drop by their office on Greene Street in Mt. Airy and pick one up immediately. They’re also being sold at the Weavers Way Coop and through my website.

They are $20 each, and half of that goes directly to MALT’s Make This Our Home building fund. They are looking to raise about $230,000 to buy the building where their offices have been for the last 10 years. This is a great community organization so if you have any ties to Mt. Airy, or know somebody who does, get them this poster as a gift.

Maple leaf logo

I’ve been working on a new logo which will then lead to a new web and blog design. I thought about having a graphic element to go with the name: Toizer Photo. What kind of element makes sense? I could choose something that just looks pretty such as a swirl or paisley-type of design. Or perhaps I should use something more closely associated with photography.

Examining my philosophy and what I have done already in my life, I wanted something that represented being outdoors as that has been the type of photography I most enjoy. Since this will be a logo, it also has to reproduce well in a variety of sizes and media so it can’t be too complicated. I started thinking about using a leaf.

Since I have no real connection to our northern neighbor, I thought the logo needed a redesign. I was also increasingly bothered by all of the black area in the upper part of the leaf. I’ve gone with something much simpler in line and concept. The leaf became more generic and is made up of only two lines. Now the funny thing is, as I look at it, the leaf becomes an eye. How interesting. People often talk about a photographer’s “eye” or their “vision” in creating images. This logo works as two different symbols, one of which is very closely associated with photography, and art is all about the interpretation.

So what do you see? An eye, a leaf, or something else entirely?

Leaf/eye logo

The “Signs You’re In Mt. Airy” poster is almost ready to be printed! I had to make a few revisions to the initial design. It seems I had confused a boundary and included several businesses that weren’t in the city, let alone in Mt. Airy. Those had to be removed and replaced with others. I had some help along the way from the staff at the Mt. Airy Learning Tree, providing suggestions and even securing a large “Mt. Airy Philadelphia” sign in their office. I had, in fact, found a similar sign still attached to a telephone pole near my childhood home and that is the one on the poster. Another friend of mine reminded me of the license plate with a smiley face and “I like Mt. Airy” written on it. So I went in search of a car with one of those plates. Wouldn’t you know there were 3 cars on my old block with that plate!

The poster will be proofed and approved in the next week or so. Then on to the printer and shipped back to Mt. Airy Learning Tree and available for sale.

Thank you to all who have provided support and suggestions throughout this project!

I grew up in Mt. Airy, a neighborhood in the northwestern part of Philadelphia. It’s close to center city yet feels very suburban. It’s a progressive area with one of the country’s oldest co-op markets, Weavers Way, and wonderfully integrated. Our block was quiet enough to ride my bike in the street; there was room to run and play behind the house; it’s very family friendly.

My latest project was born out of something I was doing for work. We’re co-sponsoring a photo contest of Mt. Airy to use the winning images in a 2010 desk calendar. Sales of this calendar will benefit (modestly) a local organization where “neighbors teach neighbors,” the Mt. Airy Learning Tree (MALT). MALT has just started a capital campaign to buy their building, trying to raise $230,000 by next September. I was out on the main street, visiting businesses to promote the contest. I had my own camera with me and started to photograph the business signs. I was thinking about a collage for the calendar cover.

A few days went by and I was continuing to promote the photo contest and photographing business signs. I hit upon a great idea – create a collage of these signs – business and otherwise and sell a poster to help MALT raise more money toward their goal. I’ve worked on the collage for the past several days, using 86 images of different signs from around Mt. Airy. Today I had a version to share with the director of MALT. We’ve been emailing back and forth about pricing, how much of that would go to MALT, and how best to promote the poster to sell a bunch.

Although not quite ready to make that announcement, we’re very close to making this all public. Stay tuned. In the meantime, here’s the poster as it stands right now.

Once the Star Wars Lego project died thanks to Lucas Licensing, I started to think about what my next project should be. In March I thought that perhaps I could make money by “selling money.” This started innocently enough by searching through what other artists were doing with US currency. Some were folding it like origami, others were painting or drawing dollar bills but no one was creating images of money based on actual photos.

I thought it might be easier to scan the bills into Photoshop and then take it from there, creating collages built from individual bills. I put a $5 note on the scanner and began the project. I applaud Adobe and the manufacturers of scanning equipment for what happened next. Somewhere in the process, the software recognized that I was scanning US currency and gave me an error message, directing me to a website about the rules of reproducing our money.

I checked out the website which was really quite fascinating. There are very strict laws regarding the creation and use of images of US paper money. According to the Secret Service, color illustrations of US currency are allowed as long as:

• “The illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated”
• “The illustration is one-sided” and
• “All negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use”

Now I know that I’m not trying to counterfeit our bills but my computer system doesn’t. The law doesn’t indicate that images of our currency are completely illegal so I didn’t have to abandon the project. But it did mean setting up a copy stand and photographing the bills rather than trying to use the scanner. I borrowed my sister’s stand and started to photograph different bills. I photographed individual bills in their entirety and close-ups of various parts: the portrait, image on the reverse, and the numeric denomination in the corners. I also photographed a number of bills together, filling up the entire area.

As I continued to think about the project, I decided that adding a piggy bank could be more interesting. I didn’t think finding a piggy would be difficult. But what I found was a very shiny brass-colored piggy at a local Target. It was so shiny, I could see myself reflected in it. I bought a can of matte black spray paint and got rid of that shine. Yes, I would have preferred to paint him pink, but that was only available in a glossy finish. So I made due with my black piggy and continued to create some art.

While there are restrictions on paper money, there are no restrictions on images of coins. Therefore, I added coins to my photo list.

I also tried my hand at creating a bill from scratch – a Zero Dollar bill with the Statue of Liberty as the main portrait.

It’s been a little while since I’ve really worked on this project. I entered a print into a juried show that, sadly, was not accepted. In fact, it wasn’t well received at all which has kind of bummed me out for the time being.

Preface: Even though this project didn’t wind up where I was hoping, the images and story are still worth sharing. Let me make it perfectly clear that these images are not for sale in any form whatsoever.

Back in April, 2008, I had this brainstorm for a photo project – Star Wars Lego scenes. I’ve been collecting the Lego minifigures from the Star Wars sets since production began in 1999 and have amassed quite a few. At present, I own over 200 figures and a few of the smaller sets. Anyway, the basic idea was to recreate scenes from the movies using Lego figures: the speederbike chase through the woods and a platoon of stormtroopers lined up in the Death Star were the initial ideas.

First I had to work through some technical issues. The figures are only about 2 inches tall so I needed to make sure I could photograph them clearly. My lens of choice was a Tamron 90mm f2.8 macro lens with a Cokin close-up filter in most cases. Next was lighting. I set up a Lowel Ego light on the left side of the figure and the reflector on the right. Lighting also necessitated changing the angle on occasion to reduce hot spots on helmets.

My first round of test shots proved very good. I was satisfied with the level of detail and started shooting more figures. Official Star Wars posters provided inspiration to create various posters. The time-consuming part was removing the background from the studio shots. As I continued working on the project, that part of it did get faster. Also experimented with making the light sabers glow. Depending on the image, that sometimes became problematic, mostly because of marks within the translucent bars.

By July, I was interested in pursuing a way to sell the designs as posters and cards, etc. I contacted the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and contacted the lawyer I was assigned in August. The lawyer indicated it would be a good idea to get a license from Lucas Arts before proceeding further. As I was preparing to buy a house, this part of the project sat on the back burner while I packed up the apartment and later unpacked my belongings at the house.

I went ahead and created a 2009 calendar to give as gifts to my parents and a cousin as well as one for me. At the end of January, I finally wrote to Lucas Licensing, requesting a license to use the images on various products and included several examples – some were individual characters, others were more involved designs.

Sadly, my request was denied.

And in one fell swoop, the Star Wars Lego project ended. Granted, I think Lucas made a big mistake and that these images would have sold quite well. But I will honor their directive and repeat that they are not available at any price.