Woodblock Wednesday - two strands

In class, some simple printing with layers of colours...

What worked best was laying the "inked" circles on the paper template, and matching the edges of the pages (from a Japanese romantic novel).

More can be done with these...

You get so busy churning them out, you don't stop to carefully consider what to do next. That comes from the review a few days later!

I always enjoyseeing the colours in the palette change during cleanup, and the mixture of colours in the sink -

Those of us who took part in Morley's Print Exchange brought in our items, for an exhibition -

 Meanwhile at home I'm working on "the water project" which was sparked ["sparked"? water? - not quite right...] by the photo of the Portuguese Atlantic on the left and the dull old Thames on the right -

I spent an inordinate amount of time find good sections of each to work with, and manipulating them in photoshop so they would print out usefully on the black&white printer -

It was a surprise to see the coloured flecks appear as the photos were enlarged. Artefacts of digital photography? Or, things that the unaided eye doesn't see? Or even - microplastics in the water?

This was my first series of tracings, but really the long format (1:4) was what I wanted. Not a complete waste of time - it gives practice in separating tones and a feel for "the shapes of water" -

 I tried painting the sparkling water with thick and then thin acrylic paint -

It sorta works? No, not quite enough! ... back to the photoshop version ...

 A few to chose from ... sleep on it ....

 Then trace again -

 And then retrace it over carbon paper! Then finally the cutting can start. This little bit took nearly an hour, to the accompaniment of several episodes of a "Book of the Week" (BBC) abridgement of the life of fashion designer Elsa Schiaperelli -

The dark areas are where I started to treat the surface with nori, to try to hold the delicate small pieces on better. Hmm, we'll see if that helps at all with the cutting, and then maybe do the rest. It's dark because I mixed the nori with my unfinished coffee - not a secret formula, just too lazy to take the 15 steps to the kitchen to get plain, clean water!