AzureGrackle

With the second snow storm of the week blowing around outside, and the Christmas concert my family planned to attend canceled, I took the day to do some more printing. Though completely outside the holiday festive season, I think this new print is one of my best so far.

I've been working with larger blocks (as big as my baby press will take), and carving several new ones since I last posted. The sun/moon block I finished this morning and just had to try out. I love how it combines with the Memento Mori skull. In the background is another new block of leaves and designs from more headstones.

The holiday shows went really well this season although OrnamentFest 2007 was for naught. Out of the 82 ornaments, I sold 6. Fortunately, people liked my matted prints better. Doing shows is always rewarding to see people react personally to my work. At the most recent one, I had three different art teachers compliment my pieces, ask a lot of questions, and one even wanted to know where I teach (I don't). Very flattering!

So I'm happy to say that art sales this season will allow me to buy new snow tires (yay!) and help fund new glasses since my regular pair broke this afternoon (I have a back-up pair, so no duct tape for me). Also broken, my shovel and ice chipper. It's probably a good thing I couldn't go any where.

So after printing all the bits of background scraps I had on Sunday night, I headed to my parents' house for the Thanksgiving holiday. Dad helped me cut the pieces of maple, cherry and mahogany into 3" x 4" pieces and then drill the holes in them for ribbon. I spent most of Monday sanding the edges smooth and then gluing the prints to the wood. Here's a shot of my gluing in progress:

Once they were all done and dried overnight, my plan was to varnish them. It would take 2 coats to really seal them and I wasn't sure I had enough time to do a coat, let it dry, buff it, then repeat. Dad pointed out that they really don't look any better varnished. The paper kind of melts away and the print doesn't look as rich. So to save myself a huge amount of harried work, I decided not to varnish them all and enjoy the rest of my holiday. :)

Here are 82 ornaments. Ribbon to hang them on is in the mail:

I'm doing a three day holiday craft show at the end of next week (ArtSpace Maynard) and it was recommended that artists with 2D works also have some smaller gift items for sale as well. So as a frequent buyer of tree ornaments, I thought "of course". Why do my great ideas always turn out to be exponentially more complicated than I think they will be?

Tonight I printed 86 little prints, roughly 2" x 3" each, by hand. Me and my trusty spoon on the living room floor rubbing candles, pine trees and stars into existence on background texture prints that I prepared earlier in the week. My wrist hurts.

OrnamentFest 2007 will start in earnest on Tuesday when I can use my Dad's workshop. I have some 1/8" thick pieces of maple, mahogany and cherry that I have to cut (table saw, eeep!) into smaller pieces. Then sand the edges, glue the prints in place. Once the glue is dry, I'll drill a hole in the top then varnish each one. I want to do two coats with a steel wool buff in between. Yes I am nuts. And yet, I am my father's daughter. The master woodworker would have it no other way.

Finally I have some organza ribbon to thread through the hole and tie off so they can hang ever-so-beautifully on a blue spruce or knotty pine, or whatever your tree of choice may be.

Coming soon to an Etsy store near you.

In class on Monday afternoon I worked on my first ever registered print, simple barn with several layers of color. In the first photo, the few details that I wanted to be white are carved out of the 9" x 12" woodblock. The pencil lines for the outline of the barn showed through and did transfer a little, but because I'm going to put darker ink over that part, I didn't worry about it.

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Next you can see some of the registration method used. On a sheet of newsprint I drew a long horizontal line, a shorter vertical line intersecting it and a mark to the left of the vertical line. Then I line up the block against the vertical line and trace its full outline so I know where to place it again when I come back to print more colors. On the back of the paper another horizontal line is drawn to line up with the line drawn on the news print.

Finally, the newsprint is put under a piece of glass and the printing paper taped to it to form a hinge against the third small vertical mark. This way your paper will also line up properly for subsequent layers.

You can also see my burnishing spoon and the light blue layer printed on the paper.

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This is a piece of blond pine I carved on Monday afternoon during my woodblock class. I was trying too hard to think of something to carve - an object, a scene - composition became forced and sketches just all around bad. So I turned my stool and looked out the window. Gravel, a drain and one red Japanese maple leaf. A quick sketch and here it is.

I used a photocopy transfer method to get the sketch onto the block. Photocopied my sketch and made sure the lightness scale was on the darkest setting to get the most toner. Then place the copy face down on the block, quickly brush the back of the paper with acetone and run it through a press for transfer. It works best with lots of toner, but it gave me enough to fill in the rest of the image by hand before starting to carve.

The top half will be grasses but I haven't decided whether the carved lines will be the grass, or the remaining wood. I just know I want that area to have a lot of white space in it since the bottom half of gravel is a lot of black space. I'm using different shaped gouges to make the gravel marks, and use the density of marks to make shadow and light. We'll see how it looks when I do a proof after the grass has been carved.