English Roses, Italian Vases

I printed one background color yesterday on my Maple print and as they are now too damp to print on I have a day off from that project.
So, I spent the day in the garden today. In addition to planting a seed crop of edamame and sweet corn, I deadheaded the roses that are finishing up their amazing May flowering but cut a few nice ones to bring in the house.

They're David Austin English roses and are very fragrant.

The white Art Deco vase I borrowed from my Mother-in-law; It's produced by Lavenia, an Italian pottery firm in the North and judging from the stepped lines it must be from the 30's.
The painted vase/water pitcher is one I bought years ago on my first trip to Florence and is of modern (1985) vintage.

And last night I caught the haunting fragrance of the Linden trees which means they too must have just started flowering. Hope to do some drawing soon. If I EVER finish the current print, the bell-like Linden flowers would be a nice pairing with the Maple seeds......

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.

Blu Vase Variations

I went to a Morandi exhibit years ago in Italy and was quite enthralled by the beauty and simplicity of his paintings. I went home and found a suitable vase from my Mother-in-law's cupboard and did this watercolor sketch. The composition is quite staid and rather uninteresting.....another Morandi I am not...but there was a liveliness to the watercolor handling that was reasonably successful and gave this little piece some life.

Like so many other things it sat on my desk and when we moved to Santa Cruz, I thought it would make a good printmaking exercise in woodcut and Moku Hanga. I hoped it would let me work on waterbased printing, especially Bokashi, the graded color for which good Japanese prints are so rightly associated. The blocks were carved in early July but my first attempt at printing was a disappointment and I put it aside. Last week, I carved another block (the one with the diamond print on the tablecloth) and had another go at printing.

This work is small; the image size is roughly 3.5" X 5" and was printed from 6 basswood plywood blocks but was printed and overprinted so has probably closer to 9-10 impressions in several different color tonalities. Hansa Yellow first as a overall plate color, then a pale Prussian blue for the vase, printed four times with different blocks to get the shading and then a Quinacradine Rose/Dalamar Yellow for the backround. A few were printed over a cobalt violet backround printed first.
I'm still not too happy with the outcome although the prints are better this time around. The combination of a stiff composition and too crude printing lost the delicacy that was in the sketch. I think the vase is still a bit too pale and I think I was printing a bit too wet as there is some tortoise-shell mottling in the blue that I didn't intend. And the colors aren't quite right. So I'll go back to the printing bench again and try to give a bit more volume and presence to the vase with some different blues and print a bit drier.