I quickly drew this simple cube/3-D illusion (see "Necker cube" if you're curious) as a beginners' exercise for one of my mokuhanga classes from last year. All of the participants carved a keyblock line block of the cube and another of one of the face blocks so they could learn basic and proper carving techniques for lines and solid shapes prior to moving on to their own projects.
I kept their blocks and added a few more to use as demo blocks to show various printing techniques as the class progressed. I found I liked the roughness of their carving, especially when mixing and superimposing the various duplicates on top of each other. So after I finished with this group, I printed a few variants on leftover proofing papers.
Now after a long hiatus myself from carving and printing, I thought I'd pull these out again.
I
will be testing my new barens (the Hon-barens I made during the
pandemic lockdowns) as well as some odds and ends of poorly labeled
paper to warm up again to printing.
It's a bit like doodling with blocks and paper and ink....as I'm building each of these multiples by grabbing blocks and trying to add layers of color to pull forward and push back some of the planes.
Most of these will likely end up
in the recycle bin but I might even end up with a couple of one-of-a-kind prints worth keeping. Most of the photos are from my studio, with poor fluorescent lighting and my phone campera lens. Their any LOTS of grays, and they don't photograph well.
This one with the idea of all of the shadows draining from a tipped over box intrigues me enough to try again with better paper and more pigment layers to build some depth and shadow.
