Enamel metaphor

I finished, and mailed off, the small 5" x 7" print to the 2014 sketchbook project's "Print Exchange 2014". This year's theme was "waiting for a sign" and I took it fairly literally.

"enamel metaphor", 5" x 7" moku hanga print;
This was printed from 5 blocks and has 8 separate color impressions.
Edition of 12 in this color scheme with 3 artist proofs.

I tend to "collect" road signs. I often stop and photograph old ones as well as ones that just strike me as odd or amusing. I also find them full of metaphoric content. "STOP" and "YIELD" are particularly strong--I guess I'm not used to the Imperative tense........Others are mere suggestions; recommendations on actions to follow....

I appreciated the friendly hint here to avoid this marble monument by going Right......

So my little print is both quite concrete: "Keep Left, Avoid Wall" but I also intended a more subtle, deeper meaning but it's one that you'll have to ponder on your own as I think it will mean different things to different viewers.
I've a few more road-sign/driving-themed prints in the "still-in-the-sketchbook phase" but there are a couple that I hope to do soon.

Proofing "Signs"

5" x 7" Woodblock print (Moku hanga).

I decided to try pulling some proofs from the 5 blocks I have carved so far on this little print.
These are for the Sketchbook Project Print exchange that I wrote about last week.  I will need to send in an edition of 12 copies ready for the end of April. I am definitely (and quite unusually for me) on time/target.
I wanted to see if I can accomplish through overprinting from these blocks for the effects I want (instead of carving the other 3 blocks I was planning on using).
These are getting pretty close to what I have in mind although the lighter one is much brighter and subtle than my scanner will pick up. The "sky" goes from a very pale blue to a light white/gray and looks great in person but is nearly invisible on the scanned image.

I'll mull over these for a few days, probably clean up a few blocks and then have another go.  These were printed on Magnani incisioni (etching paper) and there's a good chance they'll print cleaner/register a bit tighter and look nicer on Japanese paper.

There is a light blue to pale cream bokashi to the right side that isn't picking up on the monitor. Looks nice in person though.

Mirror, Mirror... Sign print is underway.

This will be a fairly simple print. I could probably get away with just 4-5 blocks but I'll probably duplicate a few as I get more texture and information in the color areas if they're printed more than once and off blocks with different grain patterns--If I use shina for color blocks I find sometimes I get a subtle grain pattern whether I want to or not.
This will be a set of simple shapes. Circle on a divided rectangle with a few bold colors and a few complex grays. Hope to pull off some good bokashi gradiants to animate what would otherwise be a very static work.
This cherry block is not really a keyblock as the big color areas will not have an outline but I wanted a little precise detail in the edges of the main form.
The success or failure of this one will come from the printing...so it will be a while before anything gets interesting.

Sign: detail

Signs

I signed up for this print exchange on a whim.
I liked the idea of their sketch book project and the idea of a kind of traveling library with artists' sketchbooks on display all over the country and I was intrigued by their offering of their second
Printmakers exchange. (www.sketchbookproject.com/projects)
The idea is similar.
500 Printmakers will each create an edition of 12 prints. One will go in their archives, one will be displayed in their Brooklyn Art Library in New York and the other 10 will be randomly distributed back to participating artists. The entry fee was a little steep ($50.00) and I was going to pass but it was the theme that convinced me to participate.
This year's theme is:  "Waiting for a Sign"--- not that that is so uncontrollably appealing it's just that I had done this sketch about 4-5 months ago:

I don't know if it's legible but the scrawled writing at the bottom reads, "waiting for some kind of sign..."
I had imagined some kind of figure on a bench reading in the foreground with this happening behind and the reader oblivious to all.   I liked the nervous sky and silly clouds and the Biblical-scale arrow coming down from the heavens. 

I took this strange coincidence as an omen that I should participate, but I decided in the end NOT to do this particular print for this exchange....mostly because I'd like to do it later and because I had envisioned this bigger and I wanted to play a bit with the printing......

So I went back to my idea file and pulled out another sketch which I've worked up and gotten as far as printed up and glued down ready for carving. It's perhaps not as exciting but it's part of a series I'm working on and at this 5"x7" scale will be a kind of trial or test print.


It also includes an arrow, a lot of blue, a wall and a sky and even a subtle, spiritual nod.  Stay tuned. Carving starts tomorrow.

Happy New Year

Wishing all a happy and healthy, productive and creative New Year.

Hope any who need direction will find it and those who already are where they want to be will share coherent directions.

Auguri and Best Wishes,

Andrew

Imagining Baluchistan

Here are two versions of a small print I've been working on.
They are about 4" x 8" in size.
The first is printed on a small fragment of my home-sized Japanese paper;

the second is on Magnani a handmade,190g/m2 watercolor paper that I've been trialing to see if it would work as a locally available paper.

The shape is based on a rug motif from a small Baluch pile woven bag that I pulled out of storage recently. This is a close up of a small pillow bag or balisht, woven by the Baluch--a nomadic tribe that inhabit parts of what are now Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. Balisht were/are small bags, woven in pairs that were part of a young woman's dowry and would have been used for head pillows or storage. Old ones are still found in pristine condition suggesting that they are not used but stored away as valued items. This one has a repeating motif of double headed arrows on a camel wool ground.

I had this motif in mind when I carved the 6-7 blocks for this little print.
It was designed to be able to play with overlapping colors--blue over yellow/red over yellow, etc and there are positive and negative blocks so I can alternate the order of printing and the effect.As with my other attempts to recall textile/rug pieces in moku hanga the results are only mediocre. It's a simple image but the prints are still too flat and the colors not nearly saturated or rich enough.

I do like however the surface I did manage to get--especially on my Japanese paper.
I also allowed the uncarved areas to print at the edges, and overprinted in tinted washes to try to get some layering and depth.

One Way (Left) Ahead

"One Way" 4" x 8.5" Moku Hanga color woodblock print.

Another go at a finished version.
Hand carved stamp for the little seal.
Still too silver but acceptable.
Still a test print.
Hope to do something bigger so I can really play with the wood texture/imperfections and play with the bigger brushes and looser printing.

I suppose I could play with the metaphorical/political implications and print bunches of these pointing either Left or Right but I'm not feeling very political these days despite the feeling of impending doom.
The Italian government is falling; the Eurozone looks doomed/imperiled;there's a health crisis looming and I'm still making woodblock prints of beetles and road signs?

Arrow(s)

I printed a few more proofs/test prints of my little, One-Way arrow sign.
I printed several copies on Shin Torinoko--a machine-made Japanese pulp and linen paper and about 7-8 on Nishinouchi. The latter is a tan, strong mulberry paper but it tends to vary in thickness across the sheet as well as in sizing--it turns out--and I had trouble again in getting it to print evenly and to not have some paper fibers pull up; if I pressed firmly enough to get a good even impression it seemed to want to pull up the paper fibers more often.

I printed the white arrow first using Zinc white and some rice paste and I did 2-3 impressions to get the white to look opaque and dense enough.
Then I printed the blue block. Again it seemed to require many reprints to get it even halfway dark. I started with Ultramarine pigment dispersion and a bit of paste and gum arabic and eventually after 2-4 impressions added a touch of pthalo blue to get it dark/covering enough. The wood grain is still pretty visible (which is fine) but I still think the blue should have been deeper; and the paper would have been happier with a few fewer impressions.

Next I printed the white block again, but this time with a mixture of zinc white and gum arabic and pressed very lightly with the baren to transfer this to the arrow shape. Then I lightly dusted brushed on some "mother-of-pearl" mica powder using a very soft, squirrel-hair mop brush. Then I brushed off the excess with another brush.
This mica turned out much too silver in color so I had to go back and print a light coating of white thinned with paste again to beat it back a bit so I lost much of the sheen I was after but I didn't want it to look like a silver arrow.

I think it looks pretty good if the lighting is right.
As a test print it has definitely been worthwhile.
I'm going to try a few copies on good, well-sized paper and see if I can have another go at printing--hope I can find some plain or white/uncolored mica.

One Way

A little temporary diversion.
I've been threatening for years to do a series of prints based on my favorite Italian road signs inspired by my forced attendance at Italian driving school. (There's an oxymoron for you). ((Forced due to residency requirements not any traffic infringements)).

Two small blocks of Beech (Faggio). These are leftover cuts of one of my beetle blocks and are about 4"x 9" in size.
A little too short to faithfully represent the actual road sign this is inspired by.
While not actually one of my favorite signs it will do as a test print.
I wanted to see if my locally-sourced, Japanese paper (unsized) would work--it didn't.
And whether I could get a decent opaque white printed on tan paper....fair but not convincing. I'll need to do multiple impressions to get the deep blue and the opaque sparkly white I want. Third, it will give me a chance to print with mica powder now that I found a local source of mica today (the ever-helpful folks at Zecchi Fine Arts) so I can now forge ahead once I finish cleaning up the blocks.

Not worth showing the results this round as the blocks are still more interesting than the prints.
Need to clean out the hollow areas--they seemed deeper before washing off my hanshita/drawing paper.