Sunday, September 10, 2017

Sweet Tea. White-line.



 It's a rainy day today. While hurricanes are pounding my old hometown, there are storms here too with dark skies, thunder and lightning and rain. The dog is shaking under the stairs and the kids are reading or doing homework.
Rainy days are good for printing but I wasn't up for anything grandiose.  So I decided to try another quick white-line print.



 It's from a rapid doodle of a few days ago that I quickly cut yesterday afternoon.
And today I snuck back into the studio to see how it would print.
The light one is on some odd Japanese Masa to which I added a little extra size.
The dark one, which sadly got an ink blotch when I wasn't paying attention, is on Italian etching paper.
In honor of my southern upbringing, and the end of the hot days of summer,  I offer this quirky pitcher of Sweet Tea. Anyone from the American South will know what this is. You can never guess how sweet it is by just looking but it's almost always too sweet.

This is on etching paper and is a little too dark and has a yellow splotch.
Both were printed on damp paper, with tube watercolors and with a baren.
 

Friday, September 8, 2017

Apostrophetic

 This is my second attempt at a white-line or Provincetown print.  You can just make out the thin white halo around the color areas that are the hallmark of the American variant of tradional moku hanga.

A simple drawing of commas and apostrophes, black shapes on white paper, caught my eye and I played with it, changing the composition.
I liked it enough to draw it a few more times.
Then enough to trace one of those drawings onto a piece of shina, and cut out, with a V-gouge, the outline of my fat apostrophes, heavy and irregularly drawn.

Today I went to the studio and made a couple of color proofs.
Pink, Blue, Violet, Black, Mica, Sumi.

I'm not sure which I like best. The original idea was to make the forms black, on a white chalk ground on tan paper but I didn't print any like that.  But I also thought about the colors of traditional printed text: blue, black, red, blue-black and ended up working with that palette.

You may not notice but the apostrophes get a little bigger as they move to the bottom row and you definitely can't see the effect of the mica powder on the background, which makes the lighter center section slightly opaque and iridescent.


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Monday, September 4, 2017

Another smile.



    I'm happy that this little thing found a new home today. 
I have this and the four blocks that I used to print it in the studio window that faces the street and it's designed to catch the eye of people walking by to draw attention to our studio and my work. It's also one of the prints that is priced really low....it's an open edition and I wanted something bright and cheerful that would allow almost anyone, despite their budget, to be able to collect a piece of original art, made with care. It's a simple thing, lighthearted and fun and it's one of the prints I use sometimes when I want to demonstrate Japanese printmaking. 
   Today a Flemish couple stopped by my studio and spent a fair amount of time looking at my work and the work of my studio mates. They asked questions and looked at prints and blocks, my tools and studio setup.   Despite some language issues I was able to show them how the prints are made and how they're different from rubber stamps and letterpress or wood engravings or etchings. I got to meet two lovely people and they left with a small print and one of my business cards. I can't say that they'll ever be back or that I made any real money off this particular sale, but we were all smiling when we parted and I'm glad this is off to a new home and that they'll remember my little studio in Florence, and maybe me too, when they look at it again, another day, in another city, far away.