More Whales/Ancora le Balene.

I printed a small run of the 3-block whale prints on good paper but I can't say I'm thrilled.
I didn't keep to my test prints and the colors wandered way too far afield (offshore?) towards the turquoise and teals and there's too much variability within the small number of prints I made.
I never did get to use Block #4--I had hoped to print a white spray with gofun; white crushed powder ground from seashells to mimic the foam and spray of the whale's breath but even on the beige and off-white papers, the dark sea and sky makes the paper already seem "white".
Tomorrow after they're dry I'll cull the rejects of weak or too strong colored ones and see what I'm left with.
In addition to this batch, there's another 20 copies of the simpler one block/2-color version I may try to have another go at the color version to get closer to my original vision.
These were all small samples of the Okoume' plywood I got recently and cut down to use as a grain-printing block for my workshops. This print was a "test" to make sure these blocks were easy to carve and print from.

Block 4 that didn't get used.

A simple approach-FIN/BALENA

I'm trying to encourage the students and artists that take my 2-day class to keep things really simple.
This year I'll also be bringing a couple of simple prints for those that didn't bring drawings or who want to focus on the cutting and printing rather than creating (during the class) a personal image.

I usually recommend that they avoid line drawings--except sparingly or with particularly thick lines--to avoid having critical parts of a drawing fall off or to watch them spend too much time carving too few blocks and losing out on exploring the printing aspect of Japanese woodblock when having a guide is very useful.


I've been doodling these Fin Whales for a good bit.  I hope to try a fairly big, semi-abstract version based on simple shapes and blocks of color--and for this small test print I took the same approach--working from a simple cut-out paper collage to decide on the shapes and placement.

This is the hasty proof I took today.
One block of Okoume plywood selectively inked to allow two colors.
I'll carve another 2 blocks to make this a simple, 3 block print to use as a demo for my next workshop. While simple in concept, there's a lot of room for experimentation.