Moriones Festival

Moriones Festival is a week-long celebration in the province of Marinduque that starts from Palm Sunday and ends on Easter Sunday. Activities lined up during the festival include holy masses, exhibits, trade fairs, parades, processions, passion plays and one of the highlights of the event - The Via Crusis. Moriones is coined from the word "Morion", which plainly means "mask", a part of the medieval Roman armor imitating the attire of biblical soldiers. During the course of the festival, Morions in full gears with their colorful Roman costumes, intricately-carved and painted masks, helmets and brightly-colored tunics,can be seen roaming around the streets of the different towns of the province of Marinduque as early as Holy Monday, searching for Longinus - a Roman centurion who was blind in one eye. They go out the streets, chasing children, tourists and onlookers with their spears. To some, being a "Morion" is a "panata" or an act of penitence and repentance for the wrong doings they have done in the past. To others, it is their way of showing gratitude or thanksgiving for all the blessings they have received. The highlight of the festival is the Via Crusis along the streets during Good Friday, the most solemn day of the Holy Week. It is when the streets become a huge performance stage as thousands of spectators gather to witness the re-enactment of the passion and suffering of Christ on his way to Calvary.

PRINTMAKING
In the beginning, before the printing press, printmaking was not considered an art form, rather a medium of communication. It was not till the 18th century that art prints began to be considered originals and not till the 19th that artists began to produce limited editions and to sign their prints along with the technical information necessary to authenticate the work. Engraving goes back to cave art, executed on stones, bones and cave walls. The duplication of engraved images goes back some 3,000 years to the Sumerians who engraved designs on stone cylinder seals. Academics think that the Chinese produced a primitive form of print, the rubbing, as far back as the 2nd century AD. The Japanese made the first authenticated prints, wood-block rubbings of of Buddhist charms, in the late-middle eighth century Printmaking in Europe European printmaking began with textile printing as early as the sixth century, while printing on paper had to wait a bit longer for the arrival of paper technology from the Far East. The first paper produced in Europe was in Jtiva in Spain in 1151. The first woodcuts printed on paper were playing cards produced in Germany at the beginning of the 15th century. It was only slightly before this that the first royal seals and stamps appeared in the England of Henry VI. Printing from a metal engraving was introduced a few decades after the woodcut, and greatly refined the results. Restricted at first to goldsmiths and armorers, it soon became the most popular form of serial reproduction. The earliest dated printed engraving is a German print dated 1446, "The Flagellation," and it was in Germany that early intaglio printing developed

before passing to Italy (Mantegna, Raimondi, Ghisi) and the Low Countries (Lucas van Leyden, Goltzius, Claesz, Matsys). From makers of playing cards the metal engraving technique passed to artists where it probably reached its apex in the hands of Albrecht Drer in the 16th century. Albrecht Drer represented a watershed in the history of printmaking, and, since he travelled to Italy, his influence was felt there in a direct way.

The Seventeenth Century The seventeenth century saw a flowering of ornamental and portrait work all over Europe, with Rubens and Van Dyck leading the way in Flanders. By this time most intaglio work was acid etched, as contemporary artists considered this a less commercial, more creative, nobler technique. Though Italy was a hotbed of etching, ironically the leading etchers there were foreigners: Jaques Callot and Claude Lorrain from France and the Spaniard, Jos de la Ribera. The leading figure in the Netherlands at this time was, of course, Rembrandt, who left to posterity a monumental benchmark both in terms of quantity and quality. His approximately 300 plates represent virtually every aspect of human endeavor. Europe's printmaking center of gravity moved to Italy in the 18th century, beginning with Tiepolo who, it is said, exercised a significant influence on Francisco Goya. Then came Canaletto, the chronicler of Venice and Piranesi, allegedly the most important architectural printmaker of all time with some 3,000 large arquitectural etchings. The tradition of distinguished English printmaking dates only from Hogarth in the 18th century, but he was quickly followed by the satirical Rowlandson and then William Blake, the crown jewel among British printmakers. Blake's contemporary in Spain was Goya, who stretched the limits of printmaking to new heights and depths. The Nineteenth Century The nineteenth-century saw printmaking follow the same turbulent trail as the rest of the visual arts. In France the active printmakers at this time included Ingres, Delacroix, the Barbizon School (Daubigny, Theodore Rousseau and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot) and the political satirist Honor Daumier, who made more than 4,000 lithographs, mainly for newspaper illustrations. The most important printmakers among the Impressionists were Manet and Degas, the former mainly in lithographs. Though we have barely touched upon Japanese printmaking here, special mention must be made of the master of woodcut, Katsushika Hokusai, who in the last half of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th produced some 35,000 drawings and prints, many of them recognized masterpieces, many of which were to exert an important influences on European printmakers. Nineteenth century English printmaking highlights an Englishman, Francis Seymour Hayden, and an American, James McNeil Whistler. The other notable American printmaker at this time, though more in terms of natural science than art, was James Audubon.

Enter Picasso

Printmaking, like everything else in the art world, exploded in the first half of the 20th century. First and foremost was Pablo Picasso, the Spanish lad from Mlaga who made more than 1,000 prints including etchings, engravings, drypoints, woodcuts, lithographs and lino cuts. Picasso almost single handedly returned printmaking's center of gravity to France. Then came Braque, Matisse, Rouault, Chagal, Joan Mir, Max Ernst, Jan Arp, Salvador Dal and others. In Germany it was the time of the Expressionists, Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann (who taught in the U.S.A. after the Second World War), George Grosz, Ernst Barlach, Erich Heckel, Oskar Kokoschka and others. Hot on the heels of Expressionism in Germany came the Bauhaus, where artists like Kandinsky and Paul Klee produced seminal work. In England Henry Moore, besides working in sculpture, also created a powerful series of lithographs, and Graham Sutherland did noteworthy work as well, along with Anthony Gross. In the United States in the 20th century the tradition of distinguished printmakers includes George Wesley Bellows in lithography, John Sloan and Reginald Marsh in etching and Milton Avery in drypoint. But perhaps the most noteworthy of American painter/printmakers of this period are Edward Hopper with his excellent and highly personal work and Ben Shahn, who excelled in a variety of print media.

PRINTMAKING TECHNIQUES LIthography According to newburyfinearts.com, lithography is a printmaking technique that dates back to the late 1700's. This technique involves creating an image or design on a piece of limestone using a greasy substance. This substance naturally bonds to the limestone. The artist then wets limestone with water. After the limestone is wet, an oil-based ink is applied. The ink is attracted to the greasy substance and repelled by the water. The ink is transferred from the limestone when pressed against paper or canvass. Etching Etching is a process of printmaking where an image or design is transferred to paper from a metal plate. The metal plate is prepared by strategically applying an acidresistant material to its surface, then immersing the plate in acid. The exposed areas are then burnt away to a degree. The artist then applies ink to the grooves that have been burnt into the plate and presses a piece of paper or canvass against it to transfer the design. According to the-artists.org, "Relief is the oldest form of printmaking." This process of printmaking involves carving an image or design into either a piece of wood, or a piece of linoleum. Linoleum is easier to cut into, but many artists enjoy the texture that a woodcut print provides. After being cut, the wood or linoleum is dipped in ink, then pressed against paper or canvass to create a print.

Serigraph

Serigraph is a method of printmaking that creates images through the use of a stencil. The stencil is sometimes in the form of a flexible screen. When the stencil is made from a screen, the process is called screen printing. Using a flexible screen makes it possible to transfer images onto surfaces such as coffee mugs, t-shirts, and packaging. Drypoint The drypoint method of printmaking is similar to etching. The difference is that the drypoint method does not involve burning the surface of a metal plate to create a design or image. Drypoint involves creating a print by carving into the surface of a metal plate then applying ink to the grooves that have been carved. This method creates a softer texture than etching does. Mezzotint Worldprintmakers.com mentions that mezzotint is a printmaking technique that is sometimes called, "The English technique." To create prints though the mezzotint technique, designs are carved into a roller. The roller is then covered with ink and that ink is transferred onto paper or canvass. Monotype The monotype method of printmaking is described by newburyfinearts.com. Paint is applied directly to a plate of glass. The glass is then pressed against paper or canvass. This technique makes it possible for artists to achieve a print where colors blend differently than they would have if applied directly to the paper or canvass with brushes. The rule of thirds is one of the main rules in art and photographic composition and stems from the theory that the human eye naturally gravitates to intersection points that occur when an image is split into thirds. Rule of Thirds Definition In the rule of thirds, photos are divided into thirds with two imaginary lines vertically and two lines horizontally making three columns, three rows, and nine sections in the images. Important compositional elements and leading lines are placed on or near the imaginary lines and where the lines intersect. When taking a photograph with the rule of thirds in mind, its always best to compose the photograph in the camera. This is so that you can avoid cropping later to retain as much of the image as possible and avoid reducing the quality of your photographs. However, I encourage going back to some of your older photography and seeing if you can improve them by cropping in a way to make them use the rule of thirds technique. When taking a picture of a landscape, its natural to want to center the horizon in the frame. However, pictures often look better if the horizon falls on the upper or lower horizontal dividing line. If the focus of your image is on land (i.e. mountains, buildings),

the horizon should fall near the upper third and if the focus is the sky (i.e. sunsets, sunrises), the horizon should fall near the lower third. Here is an example of the rule of thirds for a landscape photo. The focus is on the land area rather than the sky so the bottom two-thirds of the photograph are filled with land and the top third is sky. Here is an example of a rule of thirds portrait. As you can see, the eyes are lined up with the upper horizontal line and each eye is where the upper horizontal line intersects with a vertical line.