Pinwheels No. 3

Working proof, Mura Udabon washi

Working proof, Fabriano Artistico 90lb

Had a good day today and with the rain coming down I was able to get in a solid block of work in the studio today.
 I'm test printing the blocks for the little pinwheel abstraction print.
They are printing pretty well but I'm especially pleased as I'm printing with my two handmade barens and they've been working pretty well.
The 14cm baren I made that was a bit too big and "weak" is proving to work very well for keyblock printing, it's wide surface and softer twists seem to work well on the linework.
My "harder" 11 cm baren with the mat medium painted over the braided cord is working pretty well too. It's not as stiff as my Murasaki medium baren and being smaller is more apt to pick up stray ink but on this scale and with these fairly soft, thin papers it's been working great for a $10.00 baren.
The lower of the two is on Fabriano Artistico and the yellows were just printed  (two layers) and I'm pretty happy with the coverage..there is a little mottling but that's due to the watercolor paper more than the baren.  The upper copy is on Mura udabon; a nice beige handmade Washi of medium weight and if you look at the yellow and greens the coverage is again pretty smooth (the purple was deliberately printed lightly to get a little "texture"...).
I'll work on getting a lively orange in one of the trapezoids and deeping the textures/complexity of the other surface colors tomorrow.  Hope to wrap this up in the next day or two.

Pinwheel #2

5"x7" mixed-media: woodblock, watercolor and pen-and-ink

I printed and pasted down four of the little grid prints that are the basis of this small painting/drawing and while I was waiting for them to dry,  I hand-colored this copy that was printed on etching paper.

This is getting closer to what I have in mind.
A little too "Mondrian-esque" but I'll be printing with dirtier colors and the printed inks always look different  (besides he NEVER used diagonals or browns.......it was a kind of dogma thing.......to which I am not constrained.).

Hope to carve and print in the next 1-2 days as this is meant to be a stimulus and not a diversion.

Pinwheel

Pinwheel, 5"x7" mixed media (woodblock, pen and ink, watercolor)

I've had a backlog of print ideas for some time but I am still not yet at the "ready to carve" or print stage with any of them. But I've been itching to get back into the studio and just make some marks.
I came back from the US with a box of 4" x 6" shina blocks and I've decided to try and use them to make some quick and simple prints based on simple geometric shapes and objects.
The goal is to try to approach the rapidly drawn pen line of my sketches and later fill them in with some broad color blocks.
Here is the proof of my hastily drawn and quickly carved trial block.
I printed the uncarved back of the block in pale yellow, then the front in dilute sumi ink on Japanese paper.

Then just to get the colors flowing, I took one of the proofs on Magnani incisioni etching paper and added some pen and ink, and some watercolors.........
Not really where I wanted this to go but I'm moving forward again and that was the point.
I will carve some color sections and reprint a few of these on good paper....just to see how loose and
"sketchy" I can keep this. Meanwhile, I'm fleshing out what will be my next "real" print and hope to have a finished drawing ready for wood soon.

Day Job

When I'm asked what I do, I'm always hesitent as to how to reply.
Do you mean what do I get paid to do? Or what do I spend most of my time doing? or what would I be doing if I didn't have any family responsibilities?
What do I do well? Or Just for fun. Just for me?
What do I do that's important, or frivolous. Selfish. Selfless. 

What did I do yesterday, or today, or last month...or tomorrow?
No answers here.
I joke that I've aleady had three or four careers...

I worked in the clinic all day yesterday and will be working almost every other day through the Summer before we head back again to Italy.  And since my free time now is spent keeping up with the medical world--reviewing charts and current practice there's no time now for painting or printing. We still commute between two worlds. Italy where I get to be a dad/farmer/printmaker/artist and the US where I jump back completely into the medical world of patients, long shifts and the desire to make people well and the everpresent fear of making a mistake or missing something serious.

But we will head back to Italy in September:
The boys will be back in school and Fall chores in the fields will beckon--maybe there will still be time to put in strawberries or seed a cover crop in the bottom fields or squeak in some spinach and lettuce to overwinter.
Then maybe I'll have a moment to pull out my sketchbooks again.
I have some wood planks waiting and a few ideas I've been kicking around for years that I've been hoping to get onto paper eventually.

The Three Graces: Glad, Hefty and Kirkland

The Three Graces, moku-hanga woodcut; 8.5"x11.25" on Echizen Kozo washi

; edition 12

I don't think it was irony or wry cynicism that led me to call my last print the Three Graces;
I think instead it really was just the way the three sets of hands and tilted heads rose to the surface from the memories of art classes of long ago and art visits of more recent times and reminded me as I sketched the three bags that would become the subject of this print.  It was only later that I realized how apt a title it was. 

 

Agliaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia; they represent the three Greek Charities or Graces;
They were the goddesses of joy, pleasure, grace, beauty, festivity, adornment, dance, and song. The daughters of Zeus and sea-nymph Eurynome-- they were also the handmaidens of Hera and Aphrodite, and hence, among other things the protectors of vegetation.
Here's the entire painting, from the Botticelli room of the Uffizi gallery in Florence:

It's big, beautiful painting and enigmatic in the way that lost symbols often are.

It's a complex work, and it's symbolism and thematic origins  are still debated but it is reproduced everywhere and these three young women adorn posters, calenders, postcards, plates, trays, etc. and have become part of every Florentine's collective memory.

(Once, after a kindergarten class field trip; Sami stood in front of it and spent 15 minutes explaining to his grandmother (and a gathering of open-mouthed, American tourists) the complex symbolism and identity of the various figures: Zephry, Chloris, Venus, Eros, Mercury, the Three Graces, Flora.....))

But we've come a long way from Classical Greece or Renaissance Florence.....
I'm an American and can't claim to come from a culture that is synonymous with Art, or Creation, or any kind of Charity.
As one of the largest consumer societies in the world, we are responsible for the bulk of the consumption of needless crap, and the resulting mountain of packaging, paper, plastic wrap, cardboard, starch peanuts, styrofoam, injection-molded plastic all designed to safely envelope, package, transport  stuff we never really needed into our homes and lives.
 
So instead of Grace, Joy, Mirth and Song we have Glad, Hefty and Kirkland. And we'll be remembered, perhaps in 2000 year's time by the accumulations of refuse we've left behind rather than some painted panel or chiseled relic.

Mid Trash

I think I'm about half way.
I'm printing off the 3rd block and have taken 5 impressions so far.
The print is in that "oh my god, what was I thinking" stage where my hi key color came out too flat and my low key color is way too yellow.....oh well, that's what haste and bad lighting will do......

I've printed three times off the Okoume block and while it is a bit delicate--occasionally it has a fiber that sticks up and wants to print-- but it's printing well. The vertical wood grain is visible as a texture on the paper but not pronounced in the print the way pine would print as a strong wood grain.

Detail: all but the keyblock are printing off Okoume marine plywood.So far Yellow, then red and then brown off the same block.

I'll definitely use it in the future and will explore it's limits/possibilities some more.
As All-shina isn't available in Italy, it's a decent (but not inexpensive alternative).

Tucked prints in the freezer for a few days....too much going on to safely print.
Hope to finish it though by next week.

Okoume

Graces Block #3 Proof--cerulean blue on proof paper

 I carved one side of my Cherry/Okoume plywood blocks on the Okoume side.
This is a quick proof to check the block.

It carves very easily--like shina--although it is much softer. But I was able to carve and clear the open areas, as well as the small voids of the closure tapes and so far, so good. Easy to cut, not too splintery or shreddy, a little fibrous and with a very visible grain pattern.
This was printed hastily and a little wet.....neither the block or brush are really charged so it is not yet a good example but it prints with a pretty pronounced goma-zuri effect but it looks pretty good.
I doubt I could get a perfectly smooth impression but that's ok.

I'll get a better idea when I'm printing for real........and will show better photos then.
But this is pretty serviceable.......