Proofing Indigenous Ink

So, I worked with the ink I had made from the soil on our land for the first time today by proofing up the first five trilobites I had carved. My goal was to pull some proofs in the soil ink and be able to actually use those as well to make transfers for the color blocks. Well, it was a pleasant dream anyway.
It was a nice feeling anyways to begin printing with a pigment I had "made" myself. Even though I had poured off some water that had separated out in the jar when I initially ground the ink, there was a renewed skin of water on the slip and a strange orange red bloom of minerals suspended in it that I poured off before I began. Most of my suspensions are in alcohol and I mix/grind them myself from powdered pigment. This I left in water. In my regular suspensions, when I dip the spoon in to retrieve a bit of pigment, there is little resistance to the spoon and I often don't feel the pigment if the suspension is cloudy. It's not until I lift the spoon out does it become apparent that I have indeed scraped a lump of soft pigment that has fallen to the bottom of the jar. Titanium White (and all of its subsequent tinctures) is notorious for this.
When I dipped the spoon in for some pigment, the mud/water suspension had the resistance of hard jello. I could tell there was a lot of settled clay body in it. I spooned a bit out along with the nori paste and went to work warming up the block. Now, I had pestled this pigment through a fine sieve but not fine enough to take the granules of sand out. The pigment had the consistency of thick yogurt but I could tell there was a bit of sand in it. I have worries that I can only pull so many prints with this before the sand begins to wear down my carving! It is Shina after all. The ink itself prints up a light tan which is pleasantly warm and has only mild whispers of olive. Sadly, it clogs my fine detail and when I add more pigment vs. nori it only prints gummier. I thought back to the pestling stage of the pigment and remembered how the muck liked to wrap itself into a tightening ball form during the end stages of the work. This was disheartening to discover but I have a few more tricks up my sleeve. I washed everything and printed up the rest of the proofs in sumi and thankfully those proofs turned out fine. I'm going to try spreading out my mud pigment in the sun to dry and then grinding it to dust and the suspending it in alcohol to see how that does. I'm hoping that the process will destroy the organic element in there that I am guessing is causing the gumminess. I'm trying to make room for the nori to have its helpful gumminess. I'm also hoping that if that goes all that will be left will be the pigment and that it may print up darker as a concentration in an alcohol suspension. The drying process shouldn't take long as it IS July in VA.

As a last note, I'd like to announce how much I HATE Edgeworthia. Oh my god, I had Edgeworthia. I looked on the McClain's woodblock supply website and they stopped selling it due to its inability to stay consistent from one batch to the next. I'm going to use the Edgeworthia I have for the trilobite editions but I can see right now that this is going to be one massive headache on a large scale. I'm going to invest in a high quality washi for the Limulus. It deserves that much!
UPDATE: I actually had to "cook" the above image for it to come out right. My scanner seems to want to "fix" the image no matter how much I fiddle with the filters and settings. I think it may have something to do with Edgeworthia's gossamer qualities. I had to wash out this image in photo shop because it scanned up crisply with my scanner. I WISH it looked that way in real life but the resulting lack of contrast in this image is closer to what really printed up.

Cook'n up some Ink

Who wants to lick the bowl?
This weekend I set about making the ink I had planned for the Limulus print. I had scooped out some nice brown mud from the bottom of our hill and let it decompose in a jar in the sun for a few months. I was hoping that it would keep its nice chocolate brown color for this print but I am at the mercy of organic chemistry so we'll see what comes out. I had a large mason jar that I let sit out for a few months hoping to decompose any leaves and sticks that may be in there. It was gross when I rapped it on the porch. Gas bubbles from just under the surface of the mud would belch up and I was apprehensive about taking the lid off.
I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when I took the lid off and drained the top layer of water. I was expecting the smell to reek ungodly but there was no smell save an earthy must when you really stuck your nose in the jar.

All my utensils were lined up on the porch railing ready to go to work. The top layer of the mud was silty and still full of pine needles and bits of leaves. I ran it all through a sieve that I had purchased many moons ago for oil painting. It has been one of the best tools! After the top layer of silt came the grainier layers. I knew it was sand and gravel but the noise sounded like I was grinding glass shards into paste.

I know that much of the soil around my area is high in clay and even though there was a lot of glassy sounding sand and shards of stone in the mix, it all kept gluing itself together into rounded lumps as I spun the pestle against the sieve. I kept adding small amounts of water hoping to unlock the clay from the mass but it didn't seem to want to give. My efforts still yielded a large jar of silt that I hope will be suitable for printing but I worry about the amount of ink I will need to print my enormous wood block with. There was some mud still left in the bottom of the jar by the time I had filled my ink jar to the top so at least I have some reserve if I run low.

I couldn't have asked for a more perfect day to do this and my light green hydrangea tossed its new blooms happily in the breeze as I ground paste. It made me feel like I was a gourmet chef cooking a delectable meal for my most ardent fan. "Why yes ma'am. We use only the most fine ingredients and organic deer poop in this dish."
The final product really did have the consistency of watercolor paint. Here it is at the bottom of my mortar.

I noticed afterwards that the droplets of mud that accidentally got mashed over the side of the mortar kept their shape when they dried so I'm confident that there wasn't too much water and that there was plenty of pigment (clay) in the mix. I am worried though because they color dried out to be an ashy tan and I was really hoping for the retention of the chocolate color. I will not really know what to expect until I run proofs. I am hoping that the nori paste will help with some color retention. My faithful jam company Bonne Maman never fails me. I can't say that I'd buy strawberry jelly if it looked like that. Can you see the trilobites swimming and dancing around in there, waiting to come out?

Lovely Spines

I’m still plugging away at the Trilobite lineage blocks. I’ve carved two more from the sketches I’ve made. Even though I’m not finished by a long shot there is something so gratifying about this stretch of the project. The massive block I did with the border and horseshoe crab in the middle was very tedious. In the beginning, the copper stars and DNA border seemed fun and challenging but by the end of its completion I was getting repetition sickness! The horseshoe crab was interesting but the jury is still out for me as to whether I should leave it be or try to keep working with the design. With the Trilobites I sketch the image to my liking, carve the block, and then I’m done and can move on to the next trilobite. There’s enough variety for it to continue to be fun.
This little guy featured above is from the Lichida family of Trilobites. His name is Boedaspis ensifer and his head reminds me of a vacuum cleaner. I had fun carving his whip-like extensions.

Here is Eoharpes and will probably be the only Harpetida Trilobite that I will do. The Harpetida family has a few other variants but not distinct enough for me to do more. They mostly all have the same wide helm-like face that reminds me of a Trojan warrior.

20 tiny trilobites

Say that ten times fast! For the second stretch of the Limulus print I have started the twenty some trilobite blocks that will make up the background around the Limulus. I purchased a "Grab Box" of Shina from McClains back when they were selling grab boxes. I think they only sell bags now so it was a while ago. I've been picking out pieces and trying to figure out how the little guys will fit. Most pieces are no more than about 4 inches on either side so I'm back to my minute pecking out. Actually, the DNA border with the copper stars on each corner required a lot of minute pecking. These will just feel more immediately gratifying because they can be finished within an hour or less. I just have to keep up with the drawings! I only have five drawings completed so far.

Shina is a soft plywood and though it is better than the wood I purchased for the key block there is still a danger of flaking when I get down to the teeny tiny details. I still chase these guys with the wood glue wash. These guys will have a color block for each of them in an aquamarine color so I also have to be careful not to cut the lines too thin or registration will be a small nightmare.

I like how the clearing marks in the background look like sand or water.

Extended Absence

I must admit that I was shocked myself when I saw that my last update was in April and here it is June already. Several things have happened as of late and they have been steering my path across this rough water we call life.
I finally decided to proof up my Limulus block for better or for worse because a printer really can't decide what to change in the end until the print has been pulled. Here it is sitting on a table "warming up" with baths of water mist. Normally when I print I have a sheet or two of paper towel under a block to keep the moisture even on both sides so the block won't torque. This project is so big that I use a damp terri cloth towel to keep everything balanced. I proofed it up in bokuju but the final print will be a brown that I am working on made from soil in my indigenous area.

I found with this project that printing is quite a challenge. *Sigh* I purchased an enormous amount of Edgeworthia about 5 years ago before I learned that no, patrons do not turn out in droves to purchase woodblock prints (at least not my prints) and that no you shouldn't really print big editions until you begin to sell because then you have no money for new barens and brushes because you spent it all in paper. Lesson learned. Anyway, the edition is going to be printed on Edgeworthia which is admittedly not my most favorite of papers because for me it is very fussy. My friend Murray Whitehill was helping me and documenting with his camera as I printed. As you can see here, mutating into an octopus wouldn't be a bad idea as you can run out of hands and arms while trying to maneuver large sheets of wet paper. Murray produces really great photography and his most recent project is photographing artists as they work with a concentration on their hands. It's a great experience seeing all these hands in different media and it's become a game to me to try and figure out who the hands belong too! You can see more of Murray's work at www.MWhitehill.com and please do because he's got a lot of neat stuff!

Here is a proof coming off the block. I didn't get a whole lot of good ones because the Edgeworthia was too wet and wicking fibers all over the place. It's neat to see it coming off the block though. I am somewhat daunted by the fact that I will need registration for the next block as I have never printed this big and the bigger you go the harder it is to register finite detail.

Here is a proof of the Limulus block. I am resting my eyes a bit while I concentrate on creating and carving the family of trilobites that will surround the Limulus. I am a little dissatisfied with it but for negligible reasons. The boarder feels clunky to me but I know that it is fine because the proof is sloppy but the carving was tight and I am used to doing these small scale intricate carvings. It impresses me more when I view it from afar. Then it looks like all kinds of crazy detail. The other thing that bothers me is the shading of the Limulus. I feel like it still needs hatching but I am afraid to go any further. The wood will only allow so much before hatching turns into white area. I am telling myself that I can't make any changes until I'm finished carving the trilobites. Perhaps by that time the horseshoe crab will not appear so crude to me.

Dragon Books

Well, I have at least 7 books worth of book cover designs printed up and resting on my drying rack. This photo was tweaked a little bit in photoshop as one of my fluorescent lights on my drafting table washed the gold and burgundy hues out to a silvered gold against chocolate type pallet. This image is similar to what the real thing looks like. I didn't bother with the scanner as it usually doesn't do well with light reflecting metallics.
After I had measured out the pieces of paper to cut from one big sheet, I labored over the decision to draw a "registration panel" on the back of each one with a bone folder. As with all producers the question is whether or not such a step will interfere with the price of the final product. Will spending enough time to bone folder each and every print for registration really leave me with a comfortable feeling about pricing each book at $25.00? I finally decided that if I didn't do this step it would effect the price in that it would take me longer to measure each individual print after the fact. I was glad I did it because one set of papers was an eighth of an inch shorter than the rest. This would not effect the end quality of the book but it would be a beast to register during gluing. As with all handmades, the prints themselves jogged ever so slightly in registration due to the fact that registration guides were temporarily taped to the original papers instead of sacrificing an inch of paper. Having laid out my registration panels though made the job easier as now I only have to account for little adjustments lining up the papers for gluing to the boards. Binding will be another story all together. It is more a methodical practice, coptic binding. You simply sit down on the porch on a nice day or play your favorite album and commence sewing. I even think that maybe I will bring some unfinished ones to the market so that people will be able to watch me make the books. We'll see. There is also the matter of the stamp. I will be carving stamps to place on the inside of each first and last page as a sort of seal. The will be at least 3"X3" I hope.
I have been timidly going about the business of carving the Limulus itself. I am very afraid of screwing up the image after dealing so carefully with the detailed border. I found a few images of specimen Limulus that look like they've been shellacked to have a permanently wet looking surface. My goal was to generally carve out hunks of white highlights and then soften everything in with delicate hatching. As usual I got ahead of myself and did a bit of detailing in the shell.

I wasn't sure how the wood would hold up to the finite crosshatching but I had gone over it with a few glue washes and it has done surprisingly well.

At this stage I was unhappy with how it looked. I was thinking it was starting to look like half a vinyl record. I ignored such thoughts and pushed on. I finally carved out the entire shellfish and cut a few more hunks of highlight material out. Tomorrow I'm going to focus on more finite detailing and hopefully by this Saturday I may be able to pull a proof! I will be very excited at that prospect!

Limulus emerging

Well, I am very much excited to have finished the DNA border on my Limulus print. I started this print in January and here spring is to usher me on to the final stages of this block! Today I cleared out much of the surrounding wood from the border and carved the perimeter of the Limulus' shell. You can see the myriad of wood used to construct this piece of plywood and each piece has been a pain in my ass. None the less they were each one a lesson learned. I'm going to be carving out the Limulus itself on Tuesday and I'm a bit nervous about that. The border was hard because there was so much detail and repetition that is was more of an exercise in endurance than anything else. The horseshoe crab I want to approach just right so that the intricate border is complimented by a skillfully executed subject. I will be referencing woodblock artists who have carved dark pieces but still conveyed depth. The border is mostly lines with some solid shapes but the horseshoe crab will be mostly solid shape with white lines conveying depth. Like I said.... I'm nervous!
Those two lung shaped pieces on either side of the Limulus' tail will stay. I am leaving those large pieces in to help support the damp paper when I go to print. I am hoping that this will also registration as the paper won't sag out of register as much with those extra supports. I have had the experience that when leaving such pieces, an errant pressure from the baren will leave a tell tale mark from the edge. I have gone over the edges with a sanding block so that the supports will hopefully not print up.
Finally, the block was christened today when I drove my shallow u-gouge into a cranky spot and busted a knuckle. You know a print will turn out good if it draws blood.