Woodblock Wednesday - old blocks with new colours

This term I'm revisiting the blocks carved and printed in the two-day course in July 2017. The source was my drawing of a textile design by Eileen Hunter in the V&A -

reworked into a four-colour print -

This time round, printing started with the background block, trying to get the colour even

and using dark and light greys

For the first layer of overprinting is yellow ochre, and the first print "somehow" got turned around...

The others were better -

Light and dark, when wet -

and a close-up of the mid-tone backgrounds when dry -

Drying makes the ochre lighter, brighter. The plan is to use burnt sienna for the next layer and burnt umber for the top layer, then to print the colours in the reverse order.

At home, I tied up the blocks a bit

and printed some more, using Payne's grey rather than mixing my own grey. The first printing didn't start well -

As the block got used and I got bolder with the amount of paint, things improved -

Interestingly, diluting the paint considerably hardly affected the darkness of the print ... until it got very diluted indeed.

The first print with burnt umber (top) was a mess, I was in a hurry.  Slowing down, being more careful, made a big difference! -

On reflection I realised that it might have been better to print the same block as used for the ochre in class. Will try that next time.