Over the last few days I finally got time to get a few ideas to the press. I ran out of wood blocks months ago and
as way leads to way I haven’t had time to make more. Last week I popped up to a friend’s house, was plied drinks and conversation, and eventually got some new maple blocks cut for wood-cutting purposes. Turns out they are almost exactly type-high (.9186″) so I didn’t have to do an inordinate amount of sanding or planing. The press gods were on my side.
Most people talk about basswood as being the wood of choice for woodcuts, but I can’t find any locally that has a strong cross-grain, which pretty much guarantees i’ll pull the grain out somewhere. I decided to try some maple this time, which isn’t too expensive and there were some boards that had a nice tight grain. The wood itself is harder, but there is less destruction in the carving process. I also tried using a wood filler over the whole surface and find sanding on my granite makeready table to make sure the carving surface was less porous.
At any rate, I printed this window (with cat) based on an illustration I did
here when we drove down to Salida, Colorado for the conference in May. I first printed the blue, then decided it was kind of plain, so I added the red bricks and cat, cut from another block. I made sure to overlay some of the red on the curtains so it actually has the appearance of a three-colour print because of the transparency of the inks. All in all I’m pretty satisfied with the result and I’m looking forward to some more time for more prints. I currently have one of these for sale on my
etsy store which I haven’t used for a while, but will be starting to post a few more things there in the coming weeks.
Happy Holidays everyone.
michael
Over the last few days I finally got time to get a few ideas to the press. I ran out of wood blocks months ago and as way leads to way I haven’t had time to make more. Last week I popped up to a friend’s house, was plied drinks and conversation, and eventually got some new maple blocks cut for wood-cutting purposes. Turns out they are almost exactly type-high (.9186″) so I didn’t have to do an inordinate amount of sanding or planing. The press gods were on my side.
Most people talk about basswood as being the wood of choice for woodcuts, but I can’t find any locally that has a strong cross-grain, which pretty much guarantees i’ll pull the grain out somewhere. I decided to try some maple this time, which isn’t too expensive and there were some boards that had a nice tight grain. The wood itself is harder, but there is less destruction in the carving process. I also tried using a wood filler over the whole surface and find sanding on my granite makeready table to make sure the carving surface was less porous.
At any rate, I printed this window (with cat) based on an illustration I did here when we drove down to Salida, Colorado for the conference in May. I first printed the blue, then decided it was kind of plain, so I added the red bricks and cat, cut from another block. I made sure to overlay some of the red on the curtains so it actually has the appearance of a three-colour print because of the transparency of the inks. All in all I’m pretty satisfied with the result and I’m looking forward to some more time for more prints. I currently have one of these for sale on my etsy store which I haven’t used for a while, but will be starting to post a few more things there in the coming weeks.
Happy Holidays everyone.
Very cool.
Great primary colours (I think) and a terrific flowing design.
Like.
Yes. Awesome.
Love this design, Mike!