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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