Sweet Tea. White-line.

 It's a rainy day today. While hurricanes are pounding my old hometown, there are storms here too with dark skies, thunder and lightning and rain. The dog is shaking under the stairs and the kids are reading or doing homework.
Rainy days are good for printing but I wasn't up for anything grandiose.  So I decided to try another quick white-line print.

 It's from a rapid doodle of a few days ago that I quickly cut yesterday afternoon.
And today I snuck back into the studio to see how it would print.
The light one is on some odd Japanese Masa to which I added a little extra size.
The dark one, which sadly got an ink blotch when I wasn't paying attention, is on Italian etching paper.

In honor of my southern upbringing, and the end of the hot days of summer,  I offer this quirky pitcher of Sweet Tea. Anyone from the American South will know what this is. You can never guess how sweet it is by just looking but it's almost always too sweet.

This is on etching paper and is a little too dark and has a yellow splotch.

Both were printed on damp paper, with tube watercolors and with a baren.
 

Moku Hanga. How My Prints are made.

Moku Hanga means simply "wood print" in Japanese so all woodblock prints are technically "moku hanga". However in the West, the term is used to refer to woodblock prints made using the Japanese method; there are individual blocks (usually one for each color), watercolor pigments and rice paste are applied directly to the block with brushes (instead of  a brayer and oil-based colors in western relief printing), and they are printed by hand with a baren, a disc traditionally made of bamboo and paper that is used instead of a printing press to imprint the image onto damp (usually Japanese) paper.  It's both both simpler and infinitely more complicated than it sounds as in its simplest form, it's just a block of wood, color, paper and one could rub with a wooden spoon to transfer the picture. In the hands of the Japanese masters however, teams of craftsmen making use of multiple blocks, multiple pigments, changing the order in which the blocks were printed, adding mica, ground seashells, gold leaf, silver leaf, lacquer, etc meant for possibilities and solutions of remarkable beauty and splendor.  It takes a lifetime to learn and I'm already over 50, so my work will never reach the level of even an apprentice in the days of the Ukiyo-e, but I'm enjoying the challenges that moku hanga present.

Here are three sample prints with some explanations of how they were made:

1) Snowflake, one block, the snowflake shape has been removed from the wood and the block was printed with a simple gradation of blue ink and rice paste. In a separate printing, the same block was printed again--this time with NO ink to raise the snowflake so it is embossed--but you can't see that unless you hold the print in your hand.   This was printed on a piece of paper large enough to fold in half to use as a greeting card.

2) Blu Vase Study: Another simple print but this one with 6 blocks but as the name implies, the number of blocks and colors used varies. No key block, so there's no outline to the image and the shapes are just built by solid colors and masking of outlines. There's a pale yellow ground, a pale blue "vase" (printed multiple times to build up the form), a few shadow blocks to add shadows and details) and the edge of the table.  Here are some of the color layers (but for a different final variant):

3) November Cypresses-a traditional moku hanga-method print from 5 blocks (but 8-9 color layers) using a key block (the outline around the shapes that are commonly seen in Japanese prints) and highlighting the use of bokashi--the gradation printing associated with this method. 

All my prints start with a simple sketch--sometimes a doodle from my sketchbook, sometimes a carefully planned product of many drawings.
In this example: "November Cypresses", it was a small, ballpoint pen scribble of a row of cypress trees.

This was a 1" x 4" scribble from my sketchbook.

 I knew I was going to work loosely and have the trees in silhouette and try to make the color of the sky the focus.
The sketch was elaborated to add a border and I adjusted the size with my computer to produce a photocopy with a laser printer to the size I wanted.
This copy was pasted FACE DOWN (reversing the image) to the block using rice paste. Once dry, the paper is carefully lightly dampened with a fingertip, and the paper backing is rubbed off, leaving just a thin layer of paper that I can see through and the drawing layer glued to the block.
I carefully cut this block using the Hangi toh--a specialized knife particular to Japanese cutting to outline all of the shapes and maintain exactly the lines of my drawing which will print and reproduce my original sketch.  The rest of the wood is cleared away leaving just my registration corners (that will allow all the blocks and papers to align with this one).

Key block cutting; you can see the paper photocopy, glued down that I'm using to see where to cut.

This is the keyblock. And from this I print multiple copies on very thin, DRY paper, one for every color block planned, and these are now each glued down to new blocks and serve as the templates for the color plates. Here I've highlighted with orange the wood and printing area that I'll keep for each block.

Once these are carved, I'll have a block for each area to be printed. Although some blocks will be printed multiple times to deepen the color or to add color gradations. As pigment is mixed directly on the blocks during the printing process, I can add more paste (transparency) or pigment (color) to different areas of the block--and hence the print. Each copy in the hands of an expert printer can be made to look exactly the same, but I opt for a looser approach and every print is inked a little bit differently--and so they are all unique.
Some Notes: In this case, I knew I wanted the trees in silhouette--and darker than the "sky" so I didn't have to cut out the trees from the background block--the sky is printed across the whole paper and the trees printed over it.  I can change the sky color--purple or pink, light blue or gray  to change the mood. But if I wanted the sky to be darker than the trees for a "daytime" effect, I'd have to carve another block of the sky with the tree shapes cut out.

I loosely inked the trees themselves with multiple brushes, so the brown "trunk" and green "tree" were inked together-the colors blending in a technique called bokashi-or gradation--printing. That's better seen in the sky, where the purple ink was applied from dark to light from top to bottom.
A rough brush was also used to highlight the brush strokes and emphasize the wood grain. I also made use of overlapping blocks to add a little complexity. In the light green foreground, one block was used to print this area in a light color, another (with a few areas removed to mimic a watercolor sketch) a little darker to hint at grass and bushes....

This is quite a simple print--with just a few blocks and not many colors--but by manipulating the application of pigment and by printing on good Japanese paper that accentuates the color variations and texture of the blocks I was able to make something that is much more interesting than the starting sketch.

Each print is different and I approach each NEW print as an exercise to broaden my personal exploration of moku hanga to create modern works with my own particular vision.

La farfalla cavalaia (cabbage butterfly)

I'm still just messing around with some off-cuts of dead wood from the fields.
I have one of the olive branches from several posts ago that was dry enough to work on my engraving. I'm still learning how to hold the tool properly and getting a feel for how the different tools create varying lines--but mostly I'm learning how to control the tool held almost horizontally to the wood surface instead of almost vertically as with the hangi-toh that I use during the moku hanga carving I do.

This was based on a simple doodle of the cabbage butterfly. The drawing was bigger and more decorative so for this small round I just sketched out the butterfly and a flowering twig.
The olive was harder to carve than the boxwood from my cardinal creeper print and my rough handling shows.

hosokawa Japanese washi, printed with a baren

I couldn't find any relief ink--Rigacci--THE local art store has "stopped carrying it" so all I had was a tube of Charbonnel etching ink. It was too soft to properly roll out and it didn't print well. It was too soft so filled the lines and then wasn't tacky enough to hold the dampened paper down and a bunch shifted as I was printing and had to be thrown. I had 4-5 mediocre prints of which this was one of the best....(and it is still poorly printed--too much ink and poor impression to the margins). Another, on Italian etching paper, didn't want to sit still and I ended up printing with too little pressure for fear of it shifting.

This is on Magnani etching paper...too weak an impression with the baren.

Nevertheless,
With a little watercolor, a touch of pen and ink for the weak spots and gaps
it made a nice little birthday card for my mother-in-law who turned 89 yesterday.

Now to find some relief ink! I'll try and print a couple more of these just for fun.....
I've been hesitant to break out the good wood, but it's time to try something a little better and bigger....but I have a few moku hanga projects first so stay tuned (if  you were ever tuned.....).

Lizard Skin

Two quick shots of the proofs of yesterday's block.

The block prints pretty well; I used just a bit of Payne's Gray and Pthalo blue and paste to test the holes.
Registration was on for this block and the keyblock.

No more shots of this print for a while:
Two of my color blocks are off-register by about 1/8th of an inch.
Too much to be just cutting error on a small print and I was VERY meticulous to cut all the Kentos exactly the same. I think wood expansion is the culprit as I pasted two of the hanshitas down two weeks later than the first two.
I'll try to adjust the kentos and trim first but I may have to recarve two blocks.

This looks pretty good like this but it's pretty far from the intended print.
This texture would be more appropriate for a Gila monster or Beaded lizard and less so for the small, green anole I have in mind.
I'll have to see if the other blocks can be salvaged and suspect/hope the final work will be quite different.

Dust Bunny

8" x 10" Soft ground and sugar lift etching with color aquatint

The owner of the braid of the last two posts leaves these things each time she brushes her waist-length hair. She leaves them as little gifts on a desk, in a wineglass or tucked into an envelope like some precious little secret note.

And they are charming, in a kind of old-relic, church-remnant sort of way. We now both sort of collect them; I hope eventually to fill a large bell jar with the cast off tumbleweeds around a small suspended marble figure floating in the middle like a fetus in a hairy amniotic sac.

This print was so much fun to make.

Plate 1: 6" X 8" polished copper. Sugar lift/aquatint--even the name is cool.

A single fat brush stroke towards the bottom of the plate was drawn using a karo sugar syrup/india ink solution and allowed to dry.
Then a turpentine/asphaltum mixture was painted over that. It coated the rest of the copper plate to protect it from the acid. Once dry, the whole plate was placed in warm water and the sugar/karo brush stroke was dissolved out leaving the bare metal. This was placed in the acquatint box--depositing a thin layer of powdered rosin over the brush stroke. Heated gently in an oven, it sort of melted in a pebbly,uneven fashion so when the plate was placed in the acid (30seconds) the result is a gently etched perfect brush stroke that will print at the bottom of the print.

Plate 2: The hairball. Soft ground etching. I rolled a warm, waxy, soft resist across the whole second plate and then placed a thin piece of paper on top. Using a dull pencil, I scribbled all the lines on the paper. They pressed into the soft wax-like resist which stuck to the paper where the lines were drawn.
Lifted off they left the impression of my drawn squiggles which when placed in the acid (30 minutes) ate where the lines had exposed the metal. These etched lines would then hold the ink when the plate was inked and printed.

These were printed in sequence; First a nice lavender shadow/brush stroke for plate 1
Followed by a brown/black for plate 2.

Simple/complex--maybe not quite hairy enough....

Hairball, etching and aquatint, chine colle'
8" X 10"

Music and Noise

Music and Noise
collagraph monoprint with watercolor. 7.5" X 10"

I'm still playing around. Procrastinating really. I'm trying to get going on another woodblock print. I have a nice long plank of Red Birch, lovely grain, 6' x 8" that I've cut down into a few 15" lengths and have started sanding and planing them down. Thinking about what to do next.

There are some things I've wanted to try: a reduction print, a bold black and white image, a white-line print and a few nude/figurative pieces I have preliminary sketches for but haven't committed to.

So when I'm this waffly (is that a word? an adjective?) I usually doodle and from the noise and the clutter sometimes comes just more mess and chaos but sometimes, if not order, at least some good ideas.

This started as a kid's exercise on a rainy day. We all cut out some card stock and made collagraph plates using old 5" x 7" mat boards and glue and scissors.
This was my version from the first test printing. Each one of these shapes was cut out of an old file folder using a pair of scissors and glued down onto the matboard and then coated with wood glue to seal it before printing.
It was overwiped, too pale but well-embossed from being run through the press so this one has watercolor pigment painted on.

I think it's a cochlea. The snail like thing in our heads that is involved with hearing and balance. THIS one seems to be spewing out and rejecting all sounds.
Or is it all going in? I can't tell.