James Billiter Studio Blog

The 12 in '22

The past few years I feel like I've been balancing commissions with maintaining the Cincinnati Heritage Collection. I have been experimenting here and there with styles and developing new collections.

I've settled on a new collection that feels less graphic arts and advertising based and more observational art prints of scenes. This new collection may still be based in Cincinnati, but it feels a bit more liberating and I enjoy capturing reference imagery and using printmaking to capture reality in a stylized manner.

The prompt of 12 in '22 is inspired

by my 52 in 2011

—a

New Year's resolution

that really started this current chapter of my career. In 2011 I felt very stagnant creatively, so I set the goal of creating 1 piece of artwork or creativity per week to re-inspire myself. With this new prompt of 12 in '22 I want to create 1 strong piece per month, and focus on quality of execution during the development of this new collection of work.

Last year I had the pleasure to develop a new piece experimenting in this new style to the Tiger Lily Press Calendar. I went to the Cincinnati Riverfront in the evening and photographed reference for a great cropping of 3 landmarks from our skyline that would fit into a 6" x 8" crop. I spent about 17-18 hours illustrating the scene, and about 16 hours printing 150 of the 3-color prints (what a long day!).

I'm planning to adapt this series to other mediums as well; for instance an idea for a woodblock of the riverfront at night (see below) and also to continue my work in Polyester Lithography as well.