Blue Balloon-final version

It seems like it must have been a sad birthday party.

After lots of fits and starts, or in this case wetting, then drying, then re-wetting my cut paper, I finally got into the studio to finish the final version of the nude print, "Balloon". It ended up as an edition varie as I never really settled on a background color and most have a cobalt violet ground, reprinted with a light glaze of quinacradone pink/indanthanthrone blue with a dark blue keyblock.

I'm happy to be done with it as it was meant to be a quick print based on a loose drawing and it has just dragged on and on. I'm envious of all you organized types that manage to work efficiently and get work done on schedule. I can't figure out where the time goes.

Balloon, Japanese Moku Hanga print, edition varie of 30 with several A/Ps with slightly different background tonalities.

balloon gets a string

Well, I managed to finish clearing the 3rd block last night and this morning to dampen a few sheets of paper to see how it looks.
Here's the carved block of cherry and heres the proof. I wish the string were thinner but this is as thin as I can go (I can carve thinner lines with the toh/outlining knife but its the clearing chisels that still cause trouble for me and as this line needs to be continuous I didn't want to risk losing any. I need to clean up a few spots of the block where there's some unwanted spotting but I'm pretty happy with the additions.

The background is still a cobalt violet but a bit too dark, the striations are from too much paste and a cheap stencilling brush. The darker lines are still a mix of indanthrone blue and cobalt blue. I'm pretty happy with the composition and the hair is an improvement. When the time comes to print I'll try to better define the two different sets of lines for the hair (It should be enough just to change the order of printing and print the keyblock last instead of first). Now there's just to work out some color choices for the background block and keyblock.

Where do balloons come from?

It's funny that since I started doing woodblock prints, many of the images I've done were mined from old sketchbooks. Lots of drawings, still lives, doodles and life drawings that I kept or always liked have been reemerging as subjects for my prints.

When I was in Italy, I opened an old moving box that was full of art supplies and had three or four old sketchbooks. In one of them as I sat leafing through the pages I found a page cut out from an older sketchbook that I must have pulled out when I packed.

While they say the olfactory sense is our most primitive link to memory I find these scribbles and sketches to be amazing memory triggers that can pull me back from over 30 years in this instance to a dusty studio in Gainesville, Florida and a life drawing class that I frequented in what seems must have been a previous life.

I still remember the model. She showed up late to the class and was dressed in a leopard skin leotard that was several sizes too small. She had boots and a feather boa/scarf and a big leather belt. This is the drawing I did of her. I remember as she walked around during a break that she hated it. I had added probably 20 lbs. to her frame and she didn't appreciate it and wanted to know why I had made her look so fat. I don't remember what I said but I do remember thinking that as badly dressed as she was when she came in I thought she was beautiful naked. I know I didn't say that though; I was as shy then as I was circumspect.

But that image of her walking in persists and in the cut out drawing I preserved there's a funny shape to the upper right. But when I started pulling it out and making copies and putting a border around the drawing it became a balloon. In case there was any doubt I also wrote in cursive, "Balloon".

In my next post I'll show how "balloon" becomes a print.