![]() You can see my sloppy carving very well in this photo. Today I'm printing the second block, the darker details of the iceberg. Hopefully I'll get to the last block soon. I alternate them to help keep the moisture content even through the stack. Amazingly, even though the paper is damp and the prints are fresh off the block, the ink doesn't transfer from one print to the next so you can stack them on top of one another. And below shows how I stack the prints as they come off the block. Right after I took this picture I realized that I needed to use a longer brush, so I switched.Ībove is how it looked printed. I can always remember that the pigment end of the brush is the end with the hook. This hook becomes a marker when I'm making a bokashi. Notice that my brush has an eye hook at one end that I use to hang it. Now I begin to blend the pigment into the water/paste mix by dragging the brush horizontally. The fewer opportunities I have to misregister my prints the better! This is a pretty wide area that I'm trying to cover and there are moku hanga artists who would advise against doing a wide fade like this in one pass (better to build it up in several passes), but I've found that I don't like to do multiple overprints unless it's absolutely necessary. Then I apply some pigment at the bottom of the bokashi. In moku hanga this fade is called a bokashi and here you'll see my inelegant method of making a bokashi.įirst I apply a liberal amount of water and paste to the entire printing surface of the block. I'm working on the "sky" area and I want the color to fade off into nothing at the top. This week I dropped everything for a couple of clients, but today while I was waiting for some sketches to be approved I sneaked in some time to do the next impression. Because I mostly work for magazines, when I get an illustration job I pretty much have to drop everything in order to accommodate the tight schedules involved. My work for pay is definitely getting in the way of my woodblock hobby! One of the most difficult things for me in my pursuit of printmaking is that my illustration work makes it so hard for me to plan my prints. That's because I often work at night when I really should be in bed. Perhaps you notice that I'm wearing pajamas in this photo. Then rub the bristles on a towel and dry them hanging or with the bristles facing down. Keep adding new water and repeat the action until the water runs clear. ![]() The wooden handle should not be soaked, as it's apt to crack, so the way I clean the brush is to fill a shallow pan with water about an inch high and swish the bristles against the bottom of the pan. ![]() I'll also show you how to clean the maru bake brushes: No point in showing you the whole process again - it will be about the same! But I'll show you the new version. What will I do? I'll wait until I cool down a little and then I'll print the blocks over again. I wanted the colors to be kind of garish, but these colors are just ugly and too happy-feeling for the occasion. (The photo above shows the block with water and paste on it ready for pigment for the bokashi.) In this case I had chosen a green for the water and I thought I liked it, so I printed the whole stack in green. I usually do preliminary color sketches digitally, by scanning my paper sketch and trying out colors in Photoshop. I wanted a color that would be watery, but different than the ice. I had one more block left, the "water" block. ![]() Since I've made the commitment to doing this step-by-step I'll show you the final unsatisfactory piece. There's nothing I can do about it - have to work when the work is there - but losing the momentum is frustrating. Taking this long break in the middle of a print has been intensely unsatisfying. ![]()
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