Chinese Zodiac: 2007-2018-Mokuhanga

With my portrait of Bosco as my "Year of the Dog" print for 2018, I have finished one 12-year cycle  for the Baren Forum's Chinese New Year exchange. Each year I printed enough copies to share with the other printmakers in the exchange, with extras for relatives and colleagues and  a few to give away to collectors or important contacts and usually a few more to sell at occasional print fairs or inquiring visitors to my website. Some years I finished them so late I was too embarrassed to send them out (Tiger) so I have lots. Others are now gone except for a few bad or odd copies.
I should note that the "Year of the Boar" pretty much marks my introduction to woodblock printing as that print and making wine labels were my impetus for starting down this odd path. Here, in chronological order are the prints from this series.
For Baren members thinking, "Hey! I never got one of those!", both Boar and Rat were made with the intention of joining the official exchange, but each time, I procrastinated too much and I missed out on the entry date deadline, and I was a new member and didn't think to ask to still be included so they were not part of the Baren exchange, even though I cut and printed about 60 copies of each....
Note that with the exception of "RAT" which I produced exactly as drawn by my then 8-year-old son Sami, and "Tiger" which is based on a Tibetan Tiger carpet, are of the prints are original designs drawn, carved and printed by me. All are mokuhanga prints except for "Goat/Sheep", which is a wood engraving.
I'd also like to mention, I am not much into astrology, and was happy to illustrate the Chinese zodiac because 1) it gave me artist's license to draw and print some charming creatures in a small, postcard format and as I've mentioned before, 2) a chance to procrastinate until February (and beyond) as the Chinese New Year is a month later than ours and gave me extra time without seeming too late.

 

Snakes drying

Well, I finished printing 85 small, vine snake, woodblock prints today.
I had two bad prints--one with the classic error of flipping the print and printing one block upside down and another that shifted slightly during the printing of the keyblock.
There are also quite a few "outliers"; prints that are just fairly different from the rest;  Some are more yellow; some more brown.  Some of my backgrounds didn't print evenly and when I reprinted them the doubling of pigment made for a much deeper and darker background.
The same is true of the snake. Since his "GREEN" is really pthalo blue glazed thinly over a strong yellow---when I printed him a little unevenly and had to reprint it it became much more blue-green.
But all-in-all there are only 2-3 real rejects and since it wasn't long ago that my reject rate was nearly 50% I've made progress in both my carving and printing.

40 were printed on Awagami Kozoshi--a machine made hemp and kozo paper that I got a while ago from Daniel Smith and these will go out to the Baren Forum's Chinese New Year/Zodiac exchange.
A 90g/m2 paper  fairly white paper, they printed pretty well but are a little more "flat" than the others.
Another 18 were printed on my home-sized Hosokawa paper to see how they would print.
Another 20 were printed on a machine-made, roll kozo paper from the Japanese paper place in Toronto.
And I printed 6 on a small strip of Gekko Paper from Woodlike Matsumura which printed amazingly gorgeous but was almost impossible to print by hand (25Monme) very, very, thick and strong kozo.
I won't try printing on it again as it really was too hard.

I just finished layering the finished prints between blotter sheets and epsom board and weighted them to get them to dry flat.
Happy to be done printing although I suspect I will print another run to get to an edition varie' of about 150 or so.
But I'm taking a little break first to rest.

Year of the Snake 2013

Here's the version with the scrolling leaf/vine printed last--there's some bronze powder in the final leaf impression so it has a kind of printed-fabric look. I may try to tweak the warmth of the background and leaf pattern but it's pretty close to what I had in mind.
Although it is a "final" proof,  I often veer off when I'm actually printing so we shall see how much the final effort differs. But I think this will be pretty close.
I cut, dampened and started printing on a stack of about 80 sheets of washi today.
The first color (yellow) is down.
Tomorrow the keyblock.
Today (Feb 10th) is the start of the Chinese New Year.
Happy 2013 and Year of the Snake.

Snakes

Vine Snake; proof state. Moku Hanga woodblock print.

I had rather optimistically brought my tool box and brushes with me when I came back to Santa Cruz this month.
I'm working in the local Urgent Care clinic as they're still short. It's flu season so they're really busy and between working, charting, sleeping and other sundry tasks and obligations I wasn't really sure I'd have time.

But I did have one block of cherry plywood from my favorite wood block art supplier McClains.
At 8 x 10" it was perfect for my little postcard-sized snake print as I could get two plates off each side; two in cherry and two off the birch ply that makes up the back.

So here is my four-block (off one block) proof of this years
YEAR of the SNAKE card.

It's just a proof.

The "mouse" brown I wanted for the background is more of a crap brown and has to be changed but registration and carving are good enough.

I can't decide about another block though.
 I think the background--effective in that, "this is a Japanese-style woodblock so open space is ok" look but I'm thinking of cutting and printing a subtle leaf pattern/vine/scroll thing to the background. Since this is a VINE snake and lives in the jungle/brush it would certainly be species-appropriate.

I think I will try to carve and proof one more block if I have time.
I still have two shifts in the clinic and I head home next week.I definitely will NOT have time to print the edition before I leave so once again I'll be tossing blocks, brushes and tools in my suitcase on my trip back to Florence--where I'll still have distractions but hopefully not so many as to keep me from printing 100 little green slender serpents!

For those that like to see printing sequences;

Dalomar Yellow

PthaloBlue for snake

mauve printed twice