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.

Indecision

Well, I printed three or four impressions yesterday and I'm getting close to the critical decision....how to deal with the last background.
I have had some pretty clear ideas but as my children, spouse, and pretty much anyone who has seen the prints in the last few days have pulled out my favorite as the immediate discard so I'm wavering about whether to pay attention to my inner voice or heed the growing number of voices that agree with Alex the 14 year-old pragmatist,
"Dad, that's just plain UGLY".
My Beetle and grub prints were pretty "ugly" too (but I like them a lot) so with this print I wanted to do something a little more visually appealing but the yellow version risks being too pretty.

Here is yesterday's test of the last block which I coated lightly with matte acrylic medium proofed on drawing paper. (This is cheap paper so the surface and printing quality is very different from the carefully printed/good paper version from my last post.) I've printed a thin layer of aquamarine/pthalo blu over the yellow background.

The sealed block no longer prints the two vertical seams but gives a pronounced speckling, goma-zuri effect. It would need another impression to deepen/darken the background color.

The next block will be printed multiple times in overlapping colors/unevenly to try to get a little more depth. The colors that come next will greatly affect the overall look and balance; If I push the blue and earth-green pigments it will be more "natural" and there will be a little of the Blue-Orange interaction.
If I print again with violet/mauve it goes towards the brown and gets more moody.
If I print again with a deeper yellow it will stay pretty much as is.

Here are most of the proofs done for color testing/registration over the last few serious printing trials:.

I favor the taupe/brown/purply ones; Alex a dark green background in the bottom row. B likes the blue one at second row down/second from the left (the one shown at the top of the post).
The taupe one at top is the one everyone hates.

I welcome thoughts/opinions before I charge ahead..........

Printing in earnest: Maples again

Barens are covered. Paper has been cut, sized, aged, dampened, and placed in plastic bags to keep damp and printing has begun.
This is a shot in progress: about midway finished--9 impressions so far (and I think I'll need another 6-7).

Japanese Maple--print in progress and detail

Don't know if I am stubborn or just stupid but I keep hoping to get some finished copies of this print--I'm printing on 5 sheets of Magnani incisioni (using these as proofing sheets to confirm registration/color) and 15 of my home-sized Japanese paper (some with heavy size, some with light).
But I'm feeling optimistic as this is looking pretty good so far.....I still have some color decisions to make (the yellow background will mostly disappear) so there is still ample room to screw it up (color isn't my strength).

I've definitely invested more time and energy (and more paper) in this print than anything I've done so far (mostly due to proofing/registration errors) but I'll tally the eventual final "cost" when and if I finish it. All I know is that the stack of bad copies up to now has been getting taller and taller.

But there is hope. Printing is going well. Registration errors are fewer since I started using a carry sheet to carry the thin Hosokawa paper to my block and set it into the kento--this has been crucial as the damp paper is thin and floppy and has to be reliably placed for multiple impressions. It is tolerating lots of impressions and is picking up pigment and not shedding paper/or sticking. My re-carved background block is printing in-register--(although it too has a seam that is printing...(a thin horizontal line is visible on the yellow ground) but this should disappear when I overprint with the old background block.....

One of the reasons this is taking so long is because I am still making decisions as I go along and there are still some unknowns ahead.
That's why it's still fun.

Temporary maple print work station
Paper delivery system is on the left; upper shelf holds paper to be printed; once printed it is moved to lower shelf. I had to improvise to be able to work with a big sheet of damp paper (paper size is 15" x 16" (41cm x 42cm)).

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.

Maple Proofs

Well my first creative act of 2012 was to scrape the year 2011 off the keyblock for my slow-to-move-forward Maple branch print. I have been working on it but it just seems to be taking longer than it should. I did go ahead and carve a new 2012 on another block.

My first attempt at proofing was a disaster as my keyblock shifted on all 3 copies making it impossible to see if the registration of subsequent blocks was on.
So last night I had another go.
2 pieces of shin torinoko, one fabriano artistico, one Magnani watercolor paper.

Registration is decent but not perfect. The leaves are too orange/red and not variegated enough--I'll need to play with them during the actual printing.
And I'll need to trim down a bit some of the blocks and adjust at least one kento.
Here are the two variants that look ok.

The biggest problem is with my Shina plywood blocks. My Italian "white glue" didn't completely wash off the block and there is a thin layer acting as a partial resist. This is pretty evident here where the brush strokes are fairly visible (and wouldn't be exactly reproducible) but worse, as I continued to print the seams began to print quite visibly. Not sure yet what to do about this. Ignore it or try and work around it. The same board on the other unglued side also was starting to show the seam when printed too so it is not just the glue.

The atmosphery speckling of the darker copy is due to the watercolor paper. It can be printed more evenly by pressing harder with the baren but I was mostly checking registration and trying to get an idea of color fields. I like how it looks but it really is a defect of printing.

Oops--Woodblock slips, lost wood and repairs.

I'm pushing the limit of this particular piece of Shina Plywood. I can carve thinner lines but the glue holding the veneer firm is not always uniform and pieces will pop off. Sometimes due to a slip of the chisel and sometimes not. (A careful look at the photos will show that I gave myself some extra space while carving--I'm a good 1-2mm away from my hanshita lines but I still had a good 8-9 slips/losses/gaps.)

It's a offshoot of Murphy's law that a small loss of line is always in a critical area and not some irrelevant spot. It's always the eye or nose or a letter etc.
In this case it is the Maple seed that will be the focus of the image.

Here are a few photos of the slips (but already with repairs in progress).

I've already taken a little shina --taken off the surface with a flat chisel and cut into wedge shapes or narrow rectangles and these have been glued into the space left by a lost piece.
I've opened up the spaces a bit to give me more room and tried to flatten the bottom of both the receiving board and the wood plug.

They are allowed to dry and then the next day carefully trimmed to match the original lines. A wood glue for exteriors is best (won't come off when wet like Elmer's white glue will).
I didn't have any so used a local Italian glue that looked and smelled like airplane glue and wasn't ideal.

Here are the repairs after they've been trimmed:

And here is one view of the test proof I took today to check the keyblock.

Not invisible, but not bad.
I do take care to shave the top flat so the repair is flush with my keyblock.
With a little more care to cut the plugs to fit better and the right glue the repairs can be undetectable once printing gets underway and the small gaps fill in.