Maple, withering

Maple Branch, (withering).
16"x 15" moku hanga polychrome woodblock print
Hosokawa Japanese Washi
E.V. 10; 3 AP; a still-uncounted number of variants and rejects/misprints.

It was November when I cut off a small branch of the Japanese Maple growing in my mother-in-law's garden. I brought it inside and hung it up and in the span of a few hours the beautiful, Fall, red-carmine-vermillion leaves had twisted and curled as the water fled from their cells and the dry air hastened what Fall would have inevitably wrought later.
The back-lit seeds glowed with the late afternoon sun and the the two leaf surfaces were different colors; the back of the leaves twisted forward to show me their bellies carmine-red, puckered and veined. The front sides glowed from the sun behind,more orange, with only the veins showing dark. The chlorophyll, the green life-blood of all growing plants was too precious to let fall to the ground and had been drawn back into the stems and branches to await the lengthening days of Spring and provide the engine and fuel for next year's growth.

I had been drawing from life only earlier that day and this was another model, only older and more fragile. The dangling seeds were now earrings and jewels and the five limbs of each leaf wrapped around a body that was no longer alive. I sketched this hanging branch with its Baroque leaves with a rapid hand, in pencil, before the light faded and before the mood changed. As it dried I knew that even a careless breath would shake loose the leaves or separate the seeds from whatever invisible connection still held them to stem.


It took a long time to make this print.
Thanks to all who have looked, commented and offered advice and encouragement.
I'm glad Spring is here already and Summer just ahead.

More Maple Proofs

The troublesome block that was printing the seams remained troublesome so I bit the bullet and recarved the background on a spare shina block.
The new block is now registering better than it's predecessor,
but with the multiple printings--especially large color fields on a 14" x 14" square--registration is still off enough to be discouraging.

I've underprinted with a yellow beta-block since if the later leaf and twig blocks are off just a bit it will show through and give the effect of back-lighting.
There is enough play that overlap will/should just heighten the edge contrast.
But in too-many places it still just looks off-register.

The real problem remaining is the little rectangular chop cut into 3 blocks that ended up on the far corner and isn't reliably in-register drop-after-drop.

But the funniest thing I discovered it that if you really want a deep, dark, midnight blue.....try spilling a bottle of Prussian Blue pigment dispersion on your block.
(The dark versions are all the fruits of that spill....I had been tinting the background with glazes of blue trying to tweak it toward grey-green until the big spill.)

Below are two of the better versions. The dark one is on Magnani Incisioni and the tan one on my home-sized Hosokawa washi (39g/m2).

I was pretty happy I was able to print on it. It's definitely thinner than I'm used to but it's strong and now that it's sized it took 10 impressions without any problems in the proofing stage. I used a carry sheet--a similar sized sheet of mylar to help stiffen it enough to allow me to register it into the kento and lay it down. The paper's thinness is also an unexpected boon; I can see through it well enough to be able to rub with the baren just where I want to so
printing errors are less (the heavier papers aren't see-through and I have to press harder.)
There is still lots to do though.
The prints up-close are all rejects: there are too many ink splotches, misregistered edges, some smears, etc.
The leaves looked pretty saturated until I printed the background colors and now are clearly too pale and pink instead of vibrant red and orange.
I have by now at least 20 proofs but none that are good enough to call "finished".
I'm not sure how much time, energy, or paper I want to devote to this idea.
Still, I will give it another go with a dedicated try with at least 10-15 sheets of decent paper once I clean up the blocks. I'm hoping that if I know I'm printing "For Real" and not just proofs I'll get a better ratio of unmarred copies.

Grapes and Light

Hanukkah 2010 Starts tonight at sundown.

Fall colors.
Grapes and vines.
Light, Blessings and Miracles.

I've had this quirky idea for a while to draw a cordon-trained grapevine as a Menorah (the candelabra that holds the candles for the Festival of Hanukkah)--the Fall colors illuminating the leaves. I never really got around to doing it seriously but sat down yesterday just to try one out as a collagraph print.

All REAL artists will eventually do some nudes, a still life, some abstract thing and,
if they're JEWISH, eventually a stab at something Judaica.

Below is the print just off the press, printed in Black and White on Rives BFK paper. You can see the embossing but the vine isn't visible enough as is so again, I painted in with watercolors and brush.



I had hoped to print up a bunch for cards but it's a lot of work and the cardstock/matboard plate won't print too many before getting squished.
Maybe it will at least last 8 impressions?!?
I'd like to try tomorrow a real monoprint, loosely painting on some colors on the plate before running it through the press.
Will show the results tomorrow.

Happy Hanukkah!