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| Working proof, Mura Udabon washi |
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| Working proof, Fabriano Artistico 90lb |
I'm test printing the blocks for the little pinwheel abstraction print.
They are printing pretty well but I'm especially pleased as I'm printing with my two handmade barens and they've been working pretty well.
The 14cm baren I made that was a bit too big and "weak" is proving to work very well for keyblock printing, it's wide surface and softer twists seem to work well on the linework.
My "harder" 11 cm baren with the mat medium painted over the braided cord is working pretty well too. It's not as stiff as my Murasaki medium baren and being smaller is more apt to pick up stray ink but on this scale and with these fairly soft, thin papers it's been working great for a $10.00 baren.
The lower of the two is on Fabriano Artistico and the yellows were just printed (two layers) and I'm pretty happy with the coverage..there is a little mottling but that's due to the watercolor paper more than the baren. The upper copy is on Mura udabon; a nice beige handmade Washi of medium weight and if you look at the yellow and greens the coverage is again pretty smooth (the purple was deliberately printed lightly to get a little "texture"...).
I'll work on getting a lively orange in one of the trapezoids and deeping the textures/complexity of the other surface colors tomorrow. Hope to wrap this up in the next day or two.
Boy, these colors really look terrible. It's funny how often a print has to go through this adolescent, awkward, really ugly stage before it can grow up. In my case some of the prints stay ugly but this one actually improved a lot after another 6 passes of colors. I'll post pictures as soon as they're dry.
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