You shall have your Proof!

I cracked up at Diana Moll's comment on my last post. She spurred me on to finish the block and pull a proof before I called it a night! The proof is definitely a proof. I purchased some burgandy/wine colored paper for the book covers but the gold dust is still the shade that I will be using. This chinese red color is just a piece I had laying around. The color is okay but way too obvious for me. I didn't want to use a bright red because the chinese dragons would imply a "chinese restaurant feel" to me. It's definitely firey!

Here is the block locked up on the press bed ready for a slathering of ink. I couldn't decide whether or not to use a tinted ink or just tint base. I have decided for the books to just go with tint base. The colored paper is so dark that it will not be necessary to use any of my pigments for a "back up color".

Here is the print fresh off the press. The sticky tint base really shows.

Now we get to play in the gold dust! Static in the air really carried the particles so I'll need to don a face mask when I get ready for the real deal.
Pretty good for a days work I would say. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm finding it hard to type as my vermouth spiked peach cider is inhibiting my typing capabilities! Going to go pass out in bed now and dream of dragons dancing in flames...

Two Dragons One Pearl

I started this little number while I carve the Limulus block. When I get tired of carving wood I begin to pluck linoleum and visa versa. This project is also a farmer's market venture. I LOVE books with beautiful covers depicting mysterious places and curious things and I am hoping that someone else will too. I have decided to design three book covers for journals that capture this enthusiasm and go further if the market allows. They will all be key block images that will be inked up in tint base and then dusted with gold or silver powder to create a gilded look. I have a deep red paper for this image and it will be dusted in gold. I'm also excited to use my Vandercook for this. I LOVE using my presses. This block image has given me some relief from the Limulus print as I'm starting to go stir crazy with the DNA and geometrical stars. The repetition is mind numbing and I have a feeling it has contributed to my recent clumsiness. The organic shapes of the twisting dragons with their snarling teeth and liquid flames and helped relieve my brain of the monotony in the Limulus border. I can't wait to finish it and proof it up!

The Weasel will seek any way in....

Ah, the time honored tradition of artists seeking any means to subsidize their income....
Our local Farmer's Market in Charlottesville, VA is ready to start up in April and I would like to try to get in on it to experience what it is like! I learned a good deal from the "Holiday Market" that they held last this past winter on the downtown mall. Lesson number one: I hate cold weather. Lesson number two: People generally don't understand what a block print is or what printmaking entails. I didn't give the Holiday Market a fair try as I only sat for one day but sitting outside all day in the freezing cold on the advent of a snow storm with a total of two customers was not my idea of success. I am looking forward to the summer market though because I love sunshine and fresh vegetables! People didn't really know how to approach my stand with prints and framed works in the winter. They sort of treated it like a gallery and viewed the work and made comments but no real interest in sales. For this summer market I'm focusing only on "pedestrian" materials like journals, cards, and such. To begin with there will be only two products for sale just to see how things go. Those two products will be "Upcycled Cork Stamps" and "Hard Bound Journals".
I completed the display for some cork stamps that I made yesterday. It was so much fun to get this project together! I collect corks from bottles of wine that we drink over time and I had collected 28 before I really knew what I wanted to do with them. I designed a simple box template that I stamp my information on the front of and a sample image of the completed stamp on top. After I complete an image, I stamp it on the top of the box and in my "Stamp Morgue" book to record its existence and then wrap it in tissue paper and stuff it into the little box to await a new owner! I had made a small box full of them and could foresee that lining them up on a flat table was not my idea of successful display....especially if the wind kicked up. I sat down and sketched out a rudimentary design for a vertical display stand and set about assembling it out of odds and ends of foam core and cardboard that I had ferreted away over time. After much tweaking an adjusting, I covered the whole thing in glue soaked craft paper. The boxes fit perfect and reminded me a lot of old country store displays with their lithograph label boxes and sparkling bottles of tinctures! I had a cork stamp that I had carved a few months ago that I fell in love with and I set about stamping out little birds to paste all over the box so that it would still look good after the products were sold! I will also be bringing the stamp with me to show people what it looks like and how well they work. I made the sign out of different papers I liked and hand wrote the script. The sign detaches so that it will travel better. I will say that I just know that after sitting in the sun the nice bright colors will fade but at least I have a photo record of what it looked like. I hope that when I do get out there that I will see all those little birds I pasted onto the display by the time I leave!

On and on...

Yep, still chipp'n away at the horse shoe crab block. I think I got a little "factory fever" with the repetitive carving of the stars and DNA patterns. Before I knew it, I had screwed up major bad. I was habitually plowing through the end section of the longer side of one of the DNA strands and went right into my star pattern without realizing what I was doing. Lesson: If you're tired, stop carving. Anyway, I don't know why I tried to fill in such a large hole with wood filler but I did. I knew as I locked the studio door that night that it was a stupid idea. I even lay awake that night thinking that it wouldn't work and I was just going to have to go in and fix it. Yes, I lay awake and think about these things. Anyway, I came in and made this plug for the wound. I admit I initially tried to carve into the filler and it crumbled just as I anticipated. Normally, a plug would be wedged into the shaped hole in a block and then leveled off but because this is a piece of shit plywood board I had to hand carve and sand a small plug of shina plywood. It actually worked great (or so I think until I proof it up!). By the way, I tried out a new brand of wood filler, Elmer's, instead of Dap. Yeah, that stuff is crap. It just doesn't haven't the body I'm looking for so I guess I'll be heading into the hardware store to get more Dap.

Using crap wood is always an interesting adventure. In one of the Kirin blocks, I was carving along and found area of glitter plastered in between the layers of plywood. Here is a curious stain at the top of the block. It was probably a marker of some sort as the wood made its way to lamination. Some areas are just a straight up pain in the ass:

This is a rather large strip of black striations in a layer of the plywood. The wood gets tough and brittle in these areas and I find I have to hone the knives more frequently than usual. That white patch is the wood filler that had to be plastered into an area that just wasn't there at all. Holes are always a pain. Water can get in and spread who knows where in your image to create rot or the pressure from printing can even cause "sink holes" in your image.

Lastly, when an area is "finished" I brush on some watered down wood glue to shore up the weak wood. I'm beginning to wonder if this is the best idea as it will affect the absorption of water during the printing process but I really have no choice. If I don't do something to shore up all the detail, I feel that the block will degrade before I even finish pulling color proofs. Either way, there is more than one way to skin a cat. If it refuses to print moku hanga style, I have a can of oil based ink and a brayer at the ready!

Got a camera now!

Yay! The cable finally came and I was able to download the images I have been snapping in the studio. This is a foreshortened view of the DNA border I have chosen for my Limulus print. I believe the entire length is just under 40" and was probably the hardest part of the border to carve. The intricate star was easier for some reason.

The repetition is enough to make you go cross eyed. I'm hoping my next print of this size will be easier as the board is a lot more organic.

Here is a close up of the kento. I am afraid that it is too close and that I may have to have a smaller brush just for inking that part but that was the limit of my paper so my options are limited as well. There are 14 points on the star and there are 14 electrons in the last naturally occurring valence shell in an atom. Copper is missing 3 of these electrons and this illustrated by the dark shading in three of the spokes on the star. DNA would appear to emanate from two of each spoke to create a boarder around the Limulus. This is my attempt at symbolizing that Limulus blood contains copper and that copper atoms and Limulus DNA share a relationship that maintains the animal. I am in love with Islamic tile work and geometric patterns and I took inspiration from this to create the stained glass looking star. I am also in the process of creating a painting to go with this series.

Lastly, here is my cheap answer to my back issue. Leaning over and carving on this thing can be a real bitch. The box helps a little (until I have to move the block) and the handle on the make shift table I'm using is good as a sort of bench hook. The table is really actually a massive wooden box. I'm guessing it used to ship munitions or maybe lighting equipment or something but these days it stores my paper and acts as my carving/printing station.

The Year of the Ox

I hope I don't ruin it for anyone but I had to post an image of my Year of the Ox Exchange block. I had done two sketches but couldn't decide which one to do. I had a design with a musk ox but last minute I had a gut inclination to go with my Nandi sketch. Nandi is the name of the white Brahman Bull that Shiva rides. Nandi means "joyful."
I grew up helping my father with our beef cattle and I have an affinity for livestock. When we would go out to feed the cows it was fun to see the calves jumping and skipping in the field and when the feed came out the cows would jump and skip too as they raced to our truck. It was rare to see the bull jump or skip because he pretty much just shoved where he wanted to go so I guess he didn't get much excited about anything.... except a cow in heat maybe. Anyways, The god Nandi just seemed perfect for the Year of the Ox because we need an excuse to be joyful and because I just love Brahman cattle. I love that hump and the droopy ears! I wanted a dynamic pose and I'm wondering now if I didn't just end up doing a Schlitz malt liquor ad.
I would later like to do a few color blocks but now time is of the essence so I'll pick out a color other than black and get them bulls a moving so they can joyfully skip off to their new homes!

Camera Crippled!

This whole not having a camera around to document what I'm doing is driving me nuts! Poor little camera wants so bad to take a picture but alas his little mechanism is broken so he just clicks and clicks photos of black. My mom did what all moms do and is insisting that I use HER camera in its place... except for the fact that she has no idea where the USB cable ran off too. She just pops the memory card into her printer slot. We tried that but for some reason it won't register in my husbands printer and I just don't feel like playing network tag every time I want to blog. Luckily, seedy New Jersey is there for me and a hot little USB cable is on it's way to me from Ebay. Anyways, I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to update you guys on the Limulus block because it's turning out nicely but alas we must await the arrival of the cable.

Although my camera is out of commission, my scanner is not! I have a total of 22 drawings to complete for stage two of the Limulus print (whew!) and I am learning things about trilobites that I didn't think I would even need to but soak up I shall! (I have since learned that my rendering of trilobite legs in my future watercolor is all wrong AND I need to add two antennae!) Above is an example of creature from the Corynexochida family. It looks more like your "average" trilobite except for the half moon fused shell on his rump. It's kind of like the curvature of an old WWII American soldier helmet.

Through most of my drawing trilobites I notice that a face shield is what comes natural when rendering these animals. This is guy from the Harpetida family is pretty much all helmet! I would usually find a lot of varieties within the families and only choosing two from each is hard but pretty much all the members in this family look like this which is probably the reason this will be the only Harpetida member you will find in the final Limulus print. Something about the shape reminds me of a Trojan helmet.

Remember WWII Helmet Butt? Yeah, this is a distant cousin from the same family. This seems to be the "catfish" in the family. Its wide angle face spread out like an old vacuum cleaner and three prominent whiskers leaning back over it. The rump has shrunk and grown a feathery tail feather that shifts with the currents of the waters.
Zach asked me what kind of wood the Limulus print would be and what kind of ink I was going to use. I think the label at Home Depot said "Cheap ass shit you ought to know better than to buy but you're broke as a joke so buy it anyway". Seriously, I have no idea (don't remember!) but it sure carves crappily. I have to constantly be aware of the grain and the finished places receive a total of three wood glue washes if not more just to shore everything up. I took a proof on a different carving that I'm using the same wood with and it seems to print okay so I'm just crossing my fingers!
About the ink, it's going to be printed Moku Hanga style and I'm going to try using ink made from dirt from my back yard and ashes from my sister's wood stove to make a chocolate colored ink. It will be interesting because my dirt is a heavy iron oxide. I need a hot day to cook out the microorganisms and so far that isn't happening so we'll see.