Unexpected Treasures (Truffle)

This Saturday, while I was up in the trees pruning.  Sami called out...from afar......"Dad, I think we found a truffle....".

Clip, clip, clip. I kept on pruning but called back over the trees.
"I don't think so Sami. They grow underground and you need dogs or pigs to find them." I replied.
"Oh." he answered. "Well there's this thing with scales peeking out of the ground....I'll just dig it out.
He was out playing with our neighbor and I didn't hear anything for a bit.

A few minutes later he comes up to the base of the ladder (I'm up in the tree).
"Here. Look."

So I glanced down.
 It took about one second.

"Yes. OK. You're right.  That's definitely a Truffle." Then after a pause,
"Can you show me where you found it?"

So much for hounds. This is next to our driveway!

This is a staged photo; The truffle was put back where they dug it out to show me.

And sure enough. They had found, just peeking out of the wet/clay soil the tip of a black truffle.
Now there are HUNDREDs of varieties of truffles. Some are really good. Some are not. This smelled of earth/a bit of mushroom but did not have the really strong truffle smell of the highly prized white ones. But it didn't have the inky or phenolic smell of the bad ones either.  Tan inside. Edible. A Truffle.

I think I'll try to have someone with a truffle hound come over in the next few weeks.
Maybe there are more.

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.

Sumi Doodle. (Andrew printing)

I'm printing another small batch of horses and as I was finishing the color run of black squares I had a sumi-laden brush (for dabbing onto the blocks) that was dripping with ink.
It seemed a waste to just wash it out.

So I just dashed this off on a nearby piece of bond paper.

Andrew printing.

Then I washed out all my brushes, wrapped my unfinished prints to put them in the freezer and, after sweeping up the studio,  I went home for the day.

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.

Wear and Tear

I reached another small milestone--I had to repair the takenokawa (cover) on my home-made Baren.  This means that I've been using them and my 11cm hemp-twine and glue, twisted-cord baren developed a tear bad enough during the print run of horses that I had to stop using it. (See my post on making one: http://rospobio.blogspot.it/2013/05/making-twisted-cord-baren.html).

No worry. Practice works and I'm no longer panicking when I have to tie on a new one (I've done it now almost a dozen times....).
I'm also no longer worried about running out of bamboo leaf culms since I found a stash on the ground in the garden's bamboo patch.....and there's probably a botanical garden near you too where you can find some big enough to try out (http://rospobio.blogspot.it/2013/05/bamboo-skin.html).

So:
Snip, trash, rinse, rinse, stretch, stretch, smooth, smooth, rub, rub, rub, pleat, pleat, pleat, tie and snip.
There you are; all done.
It does get easier.
And this will definitely work.

Ready for the next one.

PS. This works reasonably well as a medium-soft baren and I used it on the thinner Japanese papers where my Murasaki baren was too hard and when I wanted a little mottling/wood grain to show.
My other home-made baren (14 cm kite-string twisted cord) instead worked really well for printing the key block.  Neither are strong enough for really good smooth color but I'm pretty happy with how they both perform.

Year of the Horse

According to the Chinese Zodiac. Jan 31st is the start of the New Year and
2014 is the Year of the (wooden) Horse.

I don't follow astrology so I can't really elaborate much about what the Horse is supposed to represent.
For me, as always, the animal zodiac has allowed me the impetus to play with an animal image as I continue to explore the art of moku hanga.
I chose to make my horse into the "White" knight of the Chessboard but with the added twist of making my horse a working animal.  Since my secret dream would be to farm with draft horses I added the collar and hames of the American style of harness in honor of the thousands of farmers back home who still insist on working the land with draft horses and ponies.   I pulled out back issues of the "Small Farmers Journal" which is full of articles about draft animals and has lots of photographs of working horses and ponies.  I cobbled together a composite from some ads for leather harness and color photographs of teams of horses pulling plows and harrows. (It is also a great resource for books and videos, conferences, workshops, internships and manufacturers of new horse-drawn machinery).   Few people are aware how many farms are still worked using animal power. More surprisingly is how many people are alarmed or threatened by the concept. One hears often how "you can't turn back progress" or how we need industrial agriculture to feed the world's hungry....But many would argue that farming became unprofitable when animals left the farm and were replaced by tractors requiring parts and fuel, and chemical fertilizers became necessary as the original source of farm fertility---crop rotation coupled with animal manures gave way to monocultures of wheat, corn or soybeans and farmers mortgaged their farms to buy larger and larger tractors to farm larger and larger acreages in the hopes that a profit could be made if they could only farm even more land. But despite all this, roughly 400,000 draft horses are still bought and sold in the USA each year. Large numbers by the Amish and Mennonite communities but there are others; old time farmers and young ones too returning to the land in the hopes of finding again a way of life that is tied to the rhythm of nature.  I grew up in the suburbs of Miami and never saw a draft horse until I was 45 years old. Here, the oxen that once pulled plows in Tuscany are all gone except those being raised for meat. There are only a handful of farmers in Italy using horses. Many more in England, France and Germany. But that's pretty far and I'm a little old to be starting from zero and the absence of local models to learn from means that my dream is likely to remain one.


Technical notes:
The keyblock was carved from a small block of boxwood.
The color blocks were carved from shina and okoume marine plywoods.
8 blocks and 12 color impressions on mixed Japanese papers. (working proof)
Baren Forum Chinese Zodiac exchange.