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Print Making Artist Leonardo Nuñez Returns to Scotts Valley Art and Wine Festival

Leonardo Nuñez's art requires a huge degree of patience and concentration.

Leonardo Nuñez utilizes various methods of print making, including linoleum reduction prints and line etchings on copper plates—a method that was developed during the middle ages by Italian armories to etch designs onto weapons and armor.

"For most artists through history, the etching was a way of actually making a living, because painting commissions, especially in northern Europe, were sometimes few and far between, and a lot of times they didn't even get paid for that," said Nuñez.

Rembrandt was the artist who really took the "chemical etching" technique to the extreme, treating it as its own medium and producing some 290 etchings during his artistic career.

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Nuñez uses the same technique that the master used, putting a thin coating over a copper plate and scratching into it with an etching needle, like a pencil on glass.

"But the thing is this tool that you're drawing with on the surface it's much more fluid and finer than any pen or pencil that you could draw with," he said. "Because it has that fluidity and the means of etching your plate to make thicker and thinner lines you have a drawing medium that was much richer and more effective for creating realism."

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There is no doubt that Nuñez embraces the realistic aspect of this medium, especially when looking at his series of the 21 missions in California.

The missions series is a detailed masterpiece he worked on between 1995 and 2000. He visited all of the missions in California at least once while etching each six by eight-inch plate. The process of etching each plate took him around three to four weeks, and he's still printing editions of them, which he'll definitely be bringing to the 13th Annual Scotts Valley Art and Wine Festival this weekend.

Nuñez's work will be framed in custom made frames, which he makes himself.

"That's a big part of how I spend my time, is framing my own work," said Nuñez, who also turns out to be a woodworker.

Nuñez lives in Lompoc and works on his print editions as well as on commission. He enjoys creating the occasional woodcut print for wine labels and also sells his pieces to the Mission Gallery in San Juan Batista, a prestigious gallery with a reputation for a fine art knowledge and an appreciation of handmade prints from all over the world.

Nuñez also worked for nine years as a volunteer drawing and painting instructor for the California Youth Authority, teaching youth incarcerated at the Los Prietos Boys Camp in Santa Barbara County. He was recognized by the County Board of Supervisors for his work there.

"Sometimes I'd go out there and they'd have a lock down and I wouldn't know it until I showed up," remembers Nuñez. 

But that wasn't too common, and the artist says he gleaned a lot from working with the kids, who were more commonly incarcerated for "repeating a mistake too many times" than for committing terrible crimes. Many of them were gang members, or had committed gang related crimes.

"I found them to be pretty open to learning drawing in a very formal way. What I did was I tried to teach them drawing like it was a city college." said Nuñez.

Nuñez noticed that art instruction gave the kids proof that there were adults out there who did not just believe they were lost causes.

"And I think just having a little empowerment that way, it might just make them want to do something different in their lives, or spend their time drawing something rather than destroying something, you never know," said Nuñez.

Nuñez is looking forward to coming back to Scotts Valley to stay with friends and sell his prints at the Scotts Valley Art and Wine Festival this Saturday, Aug. 11 and Sunday, Aug. 12 in Skypark from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

To preview more images of Nuñez's work, visit his online gallery!

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