Woodcut progress

Getting a feel for what the blocks made in the summer will look like combined with the new "spooky shapes" blocks -

Held up to the light

Another possibility

Of course the colours make all the difference. First  mix your paint, then print your backgrounds -

The yellow had already been printed

 There's no photo of the disappointing, pale, grainy "spooky shapes" - and the yellow made it look ghastly in the true sense of the word - but inking up again and printing again made for a satisfying darkness, and I quite like this combination. The darkness animates the shapes and keeps the yellow in its place -

 Some of the backgrounds were printed in a pale brown, and this is less exciting -

 I'm working on further layers. In this version of the spooky shapes, they are printed the other way round, to be mirror images -

 The background hasn't been properly cleared yet, and I'm wondering what it might look like left as is -

 The way to find out, short of a test print, is to do a pencil rubbing -

That's also a quick way to test combinations of blocks.

By the end of the course (three or is is just two weeks from now) I hope to have improved the printing skills, and maybe even cutting, if there's time to do more blocks. And to have discovered how to put them together to make something that pleases me and inspires me to continue. After the course is over, I hope to continue to develop some of the ideas that are starting to emerge. (Note to self: write them down!)

Meanwhile I've been looking at the books on my shelves, including the Kuniyoshi exhibition catalogue, from which this theatrically spooky subject comes -

Classic Japanese woodcuts abound with ghosts and monsters, such as this one by Hokusai -

(via)