Woodblock printing - Construction Lines series 2

 These prints use the invisible basis of patterns created by traditional geometry (drawing patterns with just compasses and straight edge). In the first series I tried to add the pattern itself to the grid - that turned out unexpectedly!

This time I was after the interaction between the grid of circles (flower of life) and the overlying grid of lines from which the shapes were chosen. 

The boards

The prints

I wasn't happy with my choice of colours - too many possibilities, not enough intention!

But I carried on...

... to the point of printing on the back of some prints -

Fronts

Turn them over!

Meanwhile I was enlarging the lines, working towards making the star into a negative shape; that was going much to slowly for my impatience to be finished with this project. In fact I decided just to stop.

Quite a lot of prints, but nothing to write home about

At the eleventh hour came this surprising juxtaposition - the dabsof paint waiting the be brushed evenly on the board (quick, take a photo!) -

I took a rubbing, and painted  and cut out some circular dabs - could this perhaps make something interesting? No, not really, but it was fun trying! 

My other favourite outcome of this project is the rough and ready rubbing of circles and lines -

Monotypes

 Aka monoprints. To my mind, monoprints are the amateur version, and monotype is what they become in a gallery or exhibition. 

So these are monoprints. Trials. Experiments. They turned up during a recent studio rummage and brought back memories of a summer class (a whole week of entire days) at City Lit, in which I used a kettle as starting point/subject. It started with drawing and printmaking, and moved on to painting, and was in 2016 (see here).

The folder of work from the class sits upstairs; when I looked at its contents a year or so ago, I wasn't ready to discard them yet. Still thinking "I might use these later", why is that?

Woodblock Wednesday - finally, a consortium of octopuses

Second layer on these -

 ... for a grand total of nine -

 ... and these, either finished or just the one layer printed, belatedly -

Deciding what colour to use for each took quite a while. I wrote the colour on the back of the print and put them in the damp pack.

The block had been cut back to make little holes in the suckers. Printing went smoothly. These are on paper from a hosho pad -

 and these are on other papers, which take the "ink" much better -

 The eyes were carefully tipped in as a separate layer -

I hope you can see the effect for the little holes in the suckers.

Done and dusted? Maybe. So, on to the next....

During the week I remembered seeing a print ... somewhere ... with narrow areas of colours around the edge of a circle, white (unprinted) interior and black (ink?) background, or perhaps foreground. I wondered if the layers of colour (from overprinting the colour blocks) would make a dark enough background, or if a layer of black would be needed.

 Experiments -

 Overlap (a slightly Turneresque quality?) -

To be continued...

Woodblock Wednesday

Different textures of wood shavings

Cutting an A4 sized "sheet" of travel lines ... "just because" ...

Enlarging the middle layer of the Water block - after taking a rubbing and tracing it down onto the bottom layer, to see where more of that layer might show through, I gave up being systematic and simply pared round the edges of all the little cut-outs. Will it work, hmm....

One of the printing problems has been alignment - I'll cut strips without borders and see if that helps. I'm ready to abandon this particular project but am tenacious enough to want to get it to "work" first!

Woodblock Wednesday - small Waders is done

During the week I wondered whether to carry on with the Waders - a larger block is traced out and ready for cutting -

I learned a bit about making the reflections look watery, and would like to try with larger birds - this is a detail of the screenshot of the inspirational photo -

Putting that decision aside till the small prints were done, here's the two layer print, not very promising -

 Various rubbings as the block was cut back ever more -

The printing task for the morning - half a dozen postcards and half a dozen prints -

 Oh my what a difference that final layer made!

Two prints, showing variability

 ... as you can see from a "before" (below) and an "after" (top) -

 Results -

Finito!

The worst and the best - spot the difference -

Woodblock Wednesday - layer 2 of Waders

10am. Ready to roll - paper damp, paint mixed, nori at the ready - and block reduced somewhat to get the second layer overprinted -

Three hours later, layer 2 (payne's grey) lies on top of the davy's grey of layer 1 - in some prints, the layers lie beside each other. Bad registration -

Nor does the wateriness of the reflection come through - perhaps the area, thumbnail size for the small birds. In the original photo it was more like thumb-size -

the original photo (detail)

Here's what I printed this time -

the prints

the postcards

The postcards are some pages from a Pink Pig sketchbook (white) and heavy cartridge (135 gsm; cream) from a large sketchpad. There is show-through on the pink-pig pages but very little on the cartridge -

I'm not sure either are thick enough to function as a postcard.

The group's whatsapp discussion during the session included the matter of colour gradation and "which sumi ink", solid block or liquid?

Katsutoshi Yuasa used those gradations of colour from sumi ink to print this -

It's a metre square; here he shows how to register and print large work.

Once my little birds are done, what will be the next project? Either the bigger birds, which are drawn out ready to cut

24 x 16 cm

or some travel lines, like these, which were drawn on a smooth train journey and a bumpy bus journey -

screenprints, 2011

with a view to using them with stencils ... just a hazy project at the moment, but based on my daily walks.

Woodblock Wednesday - "Waders" reduction block

The photo of the birds has been hanging around for a while, 6 February to be exact. Found online (but where?) - there was something about it....

First I printed the photo out quite small, and chose groups of birds to trace for a 10x15 print - but they were impossibly small. Try again at a larger size (to thriftily get two from a sheet of ho sho pad) -

The larger composition was traced onto the stained block after nori was rubbed in. I decided not to overthink this, just go for it, step by step. First step is to take out the background so that would "print" white, and the shapes would be a pale grey. Then, removing parts of the shapes so that each layer would become darker, ending up with black.

Starting to cut ... oh those skinny legs on the smallest birds! And, uh-oh, they don't follow the grain. Double trouble!

Retrace the composition with  the grain.  But the board was so big, hard to turn on my narrow table. It needed cutting to size -

As the fiddly bits of the first image were already cut, I decided to use the three small birds for a warm-up, postcard size -

A chance to experiment with the reflections and to determine the number of layers needed.

Cut and rubbed, ready for printing the first layer -