Progress in Optical Mixing

This is not finished. It shows promise for value, I just need to combine that with the clarity of important features such as the eyes, etc. But it shows promise.

This may not look like much. But it indicates a serious breakthrough. The problem with designing stencils with contour lines is that you can do incredible detail at large sizes like 15" by 20". But I want to make this technology available in smaller formats. This image here(my little kadiebug) can be etched at 7" tall by 3.5" wide, and still be safe. This is a rough image...it is not fully processed, but you can see that the angled contour lines give a great deal of information with very little mark making. This is key. This is where its at. The outline needs to be processes separately and then overlay-ed.

Now this one is really nice, but it has to be etched at a minimum of 20" tall in order for line widths to stay in a safe area(1/16"-3/32" or above.

There have been many artists that have experimented with optical mixing, both with color and value. The synthesis of value occurs within the brain as opposed to on the medium you are looking at. Case in point: the white of your computer screen is not really white, but a combination of red, green, and blue diodes placed next to each other.

My work continues. My goal is to balance subtle optical value with clarity of defining features. Stay posted!

Life is what it is.

This is an exciting time for me. I am contacting different business and learning more about the graphics trade.

One thing I can tell you- I care about feedback. It won't hurt, either, I promise (Eight years of art critiques in art school gave me some tough skin) But I also know that input-and especially the kind you are not the most excited to hear-is the kind you can benefit from most. I will not lie to you. I know what I do, and I do what I do well. But I am trained as an artist. I know that there is nothing that compares to the wisdom of experience, and many of you that I am working with out there have been in the monument industry for years. There are many things that I have yet to learn. My success as a graphic designer is contingent on my ability to learn from you.

That being said, sometimes coming from another discipline can offer some fresh perspective. I did lithography in grad school. Lithography put me through the ringer on more than one occasion. It is the hardest medium I have done to date, and will probably be the hardest medium I will ever face. There were so many variables. There was the chemical composition of the limestone. Every stone was different. Then there was the grit you applied with a levigator. You applied three different grits, 80, 180, and 240. You had to do it for the right amount of time. Then you poured an bath of glacial acidic acid diluted to 5% onto the stone and let it set for 2 minutes. You brush the stone back and forth with a sponge to circulate the acid and allow for the reactive acid on the top to replace the stabilized acid nearest to the stone. At this point the stone is ready to accept your drawing. There are hundreds of different materials you can apply to limestone- Touche, Litho crayon, spraypaint, anything that has grease content. Once your drawing is complete you cover the drawing with talc and rosin powder before you apply the gum arabic. You have to put just the right amount of the powder in even distribution or the the gum arabic will not etch evenly. Then you apply the gum arabic. You have to know your grease. If you have a lot of grease, you add 7-14 drops of nitric acid to your gum arabic. This will make it etch "hotter." Too cold of an etch will make the image not appear. Too hot an etch will make everything turn black. After your etch is dry, you pull out the litho ink and add varnish. It has to be at the right tact, or consistency. You take turns loading a roller with the ink and then rolling the ink onto the stone. An aid assists you in keeping the stone wet. The stone must remain wet in order for the clean parts of the stone to repel ink and for the greasy parts to accept it. You run a proof. You have to run it a the right pressure. You have a pressure bar that you have to keep lubricated. If you do all of this perfectly you get a good image.

Headache yet? Here is my favorite piece: I started etching at 9pm and did not finish it until 11 am the next morning:

Now why did I go into all this?  Two reasons. One I wanted to illustrate that I understand what it takes to get something right. I don't cut corners. I work until it is right. The second reason is that I have learned some age-old techniques that I see being very applicable to stencil sandblasting on granite.

One of these techniques is intaglio engraving. Intaglio goes way back to the 15th century. Dutch artist and anatomist Bernhard Siegfried Albinus was one of these artists. Check out one of his engravings. Be sure to click on it and look at it up close!

Albinus used contour lines to create the illusion of depth. It is incredible craftsmanship. I want to apply the same technique to granite engraving. The girl at the top of this post is how far I have come on research. If the lines are done right, the will allow for great detail and value, all the while keeping drawings simple and line widths greater than 1/16".

I have been doing line tests and other research. I believe contour imaging will work. Next week I go to engrave the creation of adam with the same technique:

I have worked hard and watched closely to keep line widths over 1/16th of an inch. This is incredible detail for granite. Of course there are limitations. But IF you know those limitations, you will be able to take them to the limit. For this reason I am going to be producing a second, more arduous line test so that you can know exactly what your equipment can and can't do. I will continue to make standard two-tone graphics, and quality ones at that, but this is what I am really passionate about. Stay posted!

qhgraphics open for business!

As of today Quality Headstone Graphics is open for business.

Our vector catalog is a work in progress. Our goal is to have 1000 graphics by 2012.
For the time being, any graphic that you need can be ordered in the custom imagery section.

I care a great deal about quality and craftsmanship. If you have any feedback, feel free to contact us through qhgraphics.com!

Thank you for giving us a chance to make graphics for your clients!

Sincerely,

Michael L. Crook, Owner, Quality Headstone Graphics

Why I do it.

I went to school to become and art teacher. I studied painting, drawing, and lithography.
Here are some images of my thesis exhibition in 2010.

This work is very dear to me, and I hope to one day make art on a more regular bases. It is different, that is for sure, but I love it. Two years into grad school and I was deeply involved with traditional painting, and learning the traditions of the masters. I was even using some of the old recipes for bleaching linseed oil, pulverizing iron(II) oxide, mixing my own paint, and everything. I have the deepest respect for the old masters: Vermeer, Rembrandt, Bouguereau, Bloch, Hoffman, Ingres.

The deeper I became involved with this research, the more the ethereal mystere of the old masters disappeared. These artists did not worship themselves as we worship them today. For the most part, these artists were simply using the materials available to them at their time to excel in their craft.

There is a lot that is wrong with art today. There is so much emphasis on the genius of the individual. It is in many ways just another route to establishing celebrity status. It is a game that is played. Just wiki the artist Damien Hirst if you want to know what I am talking about.

During grad school I became absolutely fascinated with iconography and how the human mind is able to process imagery and respond so quickly. This is why I like headstone imagery. It is deceptively simple. Some people are over sandblasting, thinking that photo-realism is the future. But this will not be the case. We as humans have always drawn heavily on abstract iconography, and we have a visual iconographic language that rivals the largest supercomputer in terms of complexity.

I find this role to be especially significant in our day. In Rembrandt's era, iconography was not as advanced, and their was a great deal of room to add visual terminology to the language. Today is much different however. With instant global communication we are bombarded with imagery. We are drowning in it. There is and will always be the Da Vinci's and Michelangelo's that create new and exciting visual language, but for every one of them, we need artists that make sense of societies visual language. This is where I find my place. I love designing headstone graphics because of its simplicity. It sits outside of the torrent of visual overload. A cemetery is a beautiful place. It is a gallery wherein we use our skills to represent some of the most important ideas in our lives: our relationships with our loved ones. The lack of interest in headstone imagery is indicative of the sickness of modern art academia. What is the training of the humanities for if not for serving our fellow man? We have become so caught up in self-actualization that we have forgotten the value of serving selflessly. When I design headstone graphics, I put my heart into it. I push myself to take the imagery to a level that it has never been before. But I don't have to put my name on it. When someone looks at an image etched into granite, they don't have to know anything about my "creative genius:" they can simply enjoy the image for its simple nature of purpose: to invoke feeling within the viewer. This is art.

My desire has always been to take the knowledge I gained in the academic world and bring it back to reality, to use my skills to make the lives of those around me a little better. These people are often simple and unsophisticated in the eyes of the world, but it is these people that are real and true.

There may be a day when I return to making fine art. For the time being, I am very happy with my business, designing graphics for monument companies.

Only in Wyoming...

Unloading Headstones at South Fork

With every job I have taken in my life, there is something that I notice. There are those that know what they are doing, and those who don't. I have met my share of managers who knew little to nothing about the job that I had in the company. A good king will be one that had at one point put his shoulder into the sickle and sweat with the rest of the serfs.

There is a difference between an architect that designs buildings and one that worked in construction before he became an architect. Not only will the latter will be more mindful of the restraints imposed by the materials available, he will be able to exploit those restraints to bring about new possibilities.

I am not a manager or a king, but I wanted to apply the same understanding to my business. The only way I will be successful as a graphic designer is if I get involved with the applications for which my graphics are being used. I have been lucky enough to work with Bott monument here in Riverton, Wyoming. The shop foreman is passionate about craftsmanship and quality, and he is a very good teacher. I watch him do everything from sandblasting stencils and scoring granite to how he sets the headstone on the foundation in the cemetery. Let's just say that I have a lot to learn.

Recently I have got to go with Allen on trips to set headstones. Riverton is in the middle of the state of Wyoming, so Bott gets a lot of business in the rural cemeteries. I love visiting these cemeteries. This past week I got to visit a very unique cemetery. It is located out at South Fork Canyon about an hour southwest of Cody. It was a true old fashioned cemetery. Walking into it felt like stepping back in time. I found some very unique monuments there...monuments that I could very well say exist only in Wyoming:

This was a real cowboy cemetery! A cattle skull, a nameplate made of barbed wire, a branding iron, and antlers! I loved it! There was a lot of personality and flair.

Cumulonimbus from the road outside Cody. One of the things I love about Wyoming.

He Who is Not In the Photograph

If there were a picture that gave description about that for which I cared, this would be it.

That's my brother, on the left, my dad looking down and my wife crouched in front of Grandpa Lyman's grave. Here is a representation of my grandfather in a more robust time:

We have an old photo of Grandpa lying around. This is a drawing of that photograph that I gave my dad for Christmas back in 2001. In the picture Grandpa is doing that which he was always doing, and that which he did best: work. He passed away in June of 2000 while I was away serving an LDS mission in Illinois. This was the last letter I received from him. I was serving in a small town called Byron at the time:

3-29-2000

Dear Lee, 

I am  always happy to receive your letters and feel of your spirit.

We are doing fine and are not ready to plow as we still have 1 1/2 feet of snow. We had a few warm days and the snow started to melt, but has cooled off a little.

The price of milk is still low, but the price of gas is still going up.

We went to Idaho Falls last Friday to see Melanie fly in. She surely looked good. Had a lot of wreaths around her neck. I believe she put one on each that was there. [I think he meant to say Leighs.]

She reported her mission Sunday and the church was filled with people. She did very good. She has certainly grown spiritually since being on her mission.

Last Sunday we rented a couple of snow machines and everyone had a real time riding them.

I got word Monday of my very dear friend Dwayne Linford Died. Grandma and I are going to the funeral. They asked me to dedicate the grave. It is being held in Lehi, Utah. The funeral is Thursday, so we are leaving this afternoon and going to Tremonton tonight to stay then on to Lehi tomorrow. We are taking Aunt Vicki with us from Salt Lake.

No: Jet isn't ruined. As soon as spring comes, we'll get her ridden.[Jet was a horse that I tried to ride just after it was broken. The mouth bit was loose and for a few eternal seconds I had a bucking rodeo  out in the hayfield.]

Learning patience is a hard job, but it is very important. We are always being tried, so don't give up. Can you imagine how many times our Heavenly Father has been tried by each of us?

Well, keep up the good work, and know that you are in our prayers daily.

We love you and are always happy to hear of your great efforts to do this great work.

Love,

Grandpa & Grandma

Crook

I have studied a lot of things and known a lot of smart people. But nobody I have known in this life was as wise and as smart as my grandfather. He was a humble farmer, born in the homesteading era in Star Valley at the turn of the 20th Century. For all of my vain intellectual pursuits in my life, no conversations have been as meaningful, purposeful, and insightful as the conversations I had with Grandpa Lyman lying down in the grass under the cottonwood trees next to the Simpson Hill. The sun was spotting through the tops of the trees as they do on a breezy day, and the faint sound of the combine could be heard from atop the hill, where my uncle was harvesting grain.

I have a lot of memories that last summer working on the farm before going on a mission. They are all special to me. I was not ready for him to pass away. He was a father figure to me. I miss him dearly. When I returned from my mission, and was off for the summer from college, I would take a motorcycle up to the Freedom Cemetery late at night and talk to him. That simple grave stone was an important marker left behind of his life. I know it was just his body under the earth, but the monument represents more than that. It is a symbolic intermediating object between my remaining on this earth and him returning to God. I felt that there was so much more that he could teach me about life, and when I returned home nothing in life was the same. This headstone came to mean a lot to me...the weight of the granite, not just a good object to engrave information to resist erosion, but the granite itself became a sort of anchor to help me deal with a world changing too quickly.

Rest in peace, Lyman. And what I mean by that is don't work too hard on the other side!
Happy Memorial Day!

The Girl in the Puddle

The following Link can be found at: trib.com:

"LANDER — Three-year-old Addison Romans was walking with her mother, Tara, just before she was fatally hit by a car this week, according to a law enforcement official.
Lander Police Chief Fred Cox said the two were walking out of the Lander community swimming pool when the toddler darted in front of a moving vehicle. The pool is adjacent to Starrett Junior High.
Cox said his department has pieced together the events leading up to Addison Romans’ death from witness reports and by reconstructing the scene with the help of the Wyoming Highway Patrol.
Paramedics worked to save the toddler, but she died at about 9:30 a.m. Thursday in the emergency room of the Lander hospital — not long after the accident.
Fremont County Coroner Ed McAuslan said Addison Romans died of trauma to her head and chest."

I cannot imagine what the parents are going through. Grief is an emotion taken for granted by those of us who have not yet lost. I have a three year old the same age as this girl, Addison. I remember feeling sick the day I heard the news of this accident.

One of my clients is Bott Monument Service. I really enjoy working with them because the go to great lengths to make sure the monument made for the death of a loved one is made with the utmost quality. Drew is one of the nicest people you could ever talk to. Well Drew contacted me to do some custom imagery for the headstone. It is a family headstone, erected and based mostly around their little girl Addison, but it is very large. It is actually in production right now, and as far as I understand, Drew has contracted with a stainless steel company in Chicago to have stainless ballons "floating" above the granite, with installed lighting for night time. I have seen designs of it, and I am excited to see how it turns out. One thing that Drew enjoys is thinking outside of the box when it comes to monuments. It has been a family business for over 135 years, so I imagine that you learn a few tricks of the trade in that time, as well as some desire to expand the possibilities of what a monument may constitute. At any rate, Drew's eye for design allows him to take risks that most people would not succeed at--and he does it well.

For the back of the monument, the family wanted an image of their daughter playing in a mud puddle, just after a rainstorm. I spoke with Tara, her mother, and she told me how Addison was always outside, with no concern for how dirty she might be getting, and fully enjoying the best that nature has to offer any child.

I understood the families desire to have a graphic made just right, so it was not easy. I knew this going in, but it did not make it easier. I have done portraiture for over 15 years. I love portraiture--but as any artist understands, there will always be new and unique challenges to face with any new project you receive, and this was no exception. I went through a lot of trial and error, photographing models and using images of the Roman's daughter that they had. I sweat A LOT. There were even times that I was not sure whether I was going to pull it off. I will not bore you of all the steps it took to get me to the final point, but when I got there...I was relieved, and excited:

This was a combination of photoshop, tablet drawing, and vector processing. It is a three-toned graphic, meaning that the mid-values will be steel-shot, and the dark values will be sandblasted. It is a large vector file, 22" by 20". I am very pleased with the result. Some things are very rewarding if you have to work hard to overcome the challenges.

I wish the Romans the best as they adopt to the fierce changes in their lives. Children are so precious, and no parent wishes to outlive their offspring. I do not believe she is simply gone, however. I believe Tara and Tony will see their girl again.