Linocut in Progress: It's all heating up...

And I mean that quite literally. It is HOT here on the coast of Maine just now-- the kind of heat that makes this formerly-of-the-high-desert printmaker wonder what she was thinking when she moved to a place where 90-degree temps can be accompanied by equally high humidity levels. To make matters worse... it just doesn't cool down at night. Back in Colorado we might have 100-degree days, but at least I could always be sure that once it got dark I could cool the house down and be ready to meet the next day's onslaught.

Here? Not so much. And I am cranky.

But I'm trying to work, despite doubts about how ink and paper behave in these conditions. It's slow going, since I frequently have to stop to wring myself out, but at least I'm trying!

I'm back to a square format for this piece; and although it will have a few of my usual subject elements (birds and water, of course), there will be a twist of complexity in the foreground that I am both intrigued by and nervous about.

But to get started, here's a soft blue in the background.... not over the entire block, it's not needed everywhere.

Linocut in Progress, Step 1

Not much information there, but that's okay. Let's try to keep some suspense going for a while. 

The second color pass was a blue-to-green blended roll, again just in the upper half of the image.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 2

It was all feeling fine at this point, but I started arguing with myself about whether or not I should be masking color out of the foreground, since the color temperature of the bottom two-thirds of the image will be much warmer than all the color that's been printed so far. My concern is with the interaction and influence of the already-printed color and the color-to-come, but I am too hot to think clearly and my brain cells are dripping down my back along with the rest of me. 

It is, however, quite satisfying to see my studio look as though there is something happening in it again. And look above my drawing/carving table! Can you see that all my carving tools are now in a nifty little rack attached to my shelf? You can thank my friend and neighbor, J, who has a lovely habit of taking an idea vaguely described by me and making it appear as if by magic.

Studio view... so nice to be working, even if I'm melting
and the paper is curling.

Sooo.... studio view and sweltering heat aside, I think I can manage one more color pass for the upper third of the image. This time it's a sort of gray-blue to lavender-blue blend... and, surprise! Some of the subjects are starting to be revealed.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 3

It's time to make yet another pitcher of iced tea and check on the status of the ice cube trays, and then it's back to the carving table. 

Linocut in Progress: Everything but the bird

It's a good thing I like blue, because there's been a heckuva lot of it going on in the studio for the last week and a half.

I entertained this vague hope that the next color pass on the water would be the final one, but, alas. T'was not so. But it was still satisfying to continue pushing the sense of depth by strengthening the foreground contrast.

It took me a couple of tries to get the dark right, and in the end I had a two-value blue blend across the entire block. Of course this was the one stage at which I forgot to take a photo of the ink rollout, so I can't show it to you. My bad.

Still.... it's looking pretty good, eh?

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 6

I'm rather irrationally happy about all those greeny blues in the background. It's a color palette that's new to me... a sure sign of the influence of my Maine surroundings.  And, hey! Lookie there. Can you finally see that there is, indeed, a bird in this image?

The problem I had at the conclusion of this step is that it was all just TOO blue. Yes, of course it's water and it's blue, but it all seemed a bit bright. One more color pass was in order, and it needed to accomplish the tasks of adding one more bit of oomph to the value contrast in the foreground, and cutting the overall brightness of the entire block.

This was a job for SOOP-er Neutrals.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 7 rollup

At this point I didn't want to add much contrast to the background, so the upper 2/5 of the block was inked with a pale, transparent gray. The lower 3/5 got a transparent warm browny-black. Nary a blue in sight, because of course the colors already present would influence anything placed over them.... especially since the new inks are as transparent as the previous.

Step 7 printed, just the bird to finish!

Yes. That's it at last! The water is finished. I remain happy with the sparkly, bubbly feel, and the tonal gradation from background to foreground.

But there's still a tricky little bit to finish: the tern. A delicate touch is going to be needed to give it just the right amount of contrast. Too much will make it jump out of the environment, and will run the risk of the bird looking like a cutout. Also, if the bird is as dark as the foreground wave, it could flatten the feeling of depth in the entire image.

I really want to finish this now, but the ink is too wet to risk printing the tiny tern shapes. It's likely to need two days before I can safely tackle it.... ugh. Torment.

But in the meantime I have plenty to keep me occupied. The two biggest priorities are tax deadlines AND reviewing the videos for my online course. Did I mention I have plenty to keep me occupied?

Linocut in Progress: In the pink!

Zooming right along... or perhaps, since the current linocut in progress is a seascape, I should say things are splashing right along. Whatever. Progress is being made.

It didn't take too long to get the block ready for the next color pass, as the first gray was really meant to show only as some subtle shadowing in the whitest bits of the wave, and the green is mostly under-color. But I wasn't ready to abandon that green yet, so for the next color pass I created a slightly darker and grayer version of it and blended that into a transparent blue-gray.

Step 2 rollup

Nice, eh? Very cheery colors to be printing in the winter.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 2

It's all rather satisfying at this point, as it often is when I'm only two steps along. Now I really have to start thinking. Oh, dear.

As I work on this piece I'm interpreting a section of a (typically horrible) photograph. Most of these little white dots are the result of sun glare off the water, and around many of the larger spots in the foreground the camera lens created a sort of lavender aura. Hm. I wonder if I can suggest that in some subtle way....

Time to get out the pink! I rarely use pinks and reds... they just don't come up often in the sorts of images that I find most appealing. But deep in my ink stash I have an old tube of magenta.... let's give that a try. Why magenta? Because the color underneath it is blue, of course! And I am trying to get to lavender.

And oh, right. There's some gray here, too, blended alongside the pink to add another layer of value to everything else in the image.

Step 3 ink rollup. Transparent gray and magenta

Aaaannndddd..... success! I am pleased with the variety of hue and tone in the image so far. It's all rather pastel-y, which is an unusual palette for me, but that will change with the next color pass. For now it's more carving, a little bit of drying time, and a good amount of cogitating on what comes next.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 3 printed

Coming up! Intro to Relief Printing workshop at the Museum of American Bird Art

Museum of American Bird Art
(No, it's not snowing there yet! This photo is from my visit there last spring.) 

Just because I woke up this morning to the prospect of a relatively easy-going week doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. In fact, if you're in the Boston area in early November and would like to get your printmaking feet wet with a relief printing workshop, have I got a deal for you!

Intro to Relief Printing
Saturday, November 10
Museum of American Bird Art at MassAudubon (Canton, MA)
9:15am-12:35pm

Participants will design, carve, and print two small blocks inspired by natural forms: plants, animals, insects… anything! Armed with newly carved blocks, we will explore printing them singly and in combination… overlapping, turning, and repeating to discover new designs.

For more information and to register, check out the MassAudubon online program catalog here.

Young Printmakers at the Woodson Art Museum: Week Two

When we last left our printmaking heroine, she and her trusty sidekick, Woodson Art Museum Education Curator Catie Anderson, had just wrapped up a week that involved carving tools in the hands of 4th grade through adult learners. I'm delighted to report only one small bandaid required in a pool of 180 rookie carvers.

But for Week Two we put away the sharp implements and loaded up a travel crate with all the accoutrements required for an inky adventure. (Read: Many, many packages of hand wipes.) We were taking our print-and-pony show on the road!

The blocks the students carved the previous week were 4" x 4" in size. Their first step this week was to print their block four separate times on small sheets of paper. This gave them time to get a feel for the proper amount of ink and hand pressure to apply, and it provided four little prints that could be manipulated to determine a final design. Our goal was to print each individual block 4 times on a 10" x10" fabric square that would ultimately be assembled as a classroom wall hanging or quilt.

Once the students determined their 4-print pattern, they practiced printing on a larger sheet of paper.

5th graders with their larger repeated-pattern prints

Printmakers. All of them. And isn't this a spectacular art room?

Once they settled on their overall design, students printed their 4-up pattern one more time on to fabric squares. So satisfying.

Let's see... let's do some quick math. 150 students times at least 12 impressions of their blocks... that's a minimum of 1,800 print impressions in 5 days. Pretty. Darn. Awesome.

Plus I have to say that you haven't lived until you've prepped and cleaned up more than a dozen inking slabs and brayers over and over during a week. I owe so many thanks to Education Curator Catie Anderson for spending epic amounts of time at the sink, in addition to organizing our travel, coordinating with schools, gathering our supplies, providing amazing classroom input and backup, and lots of great conversation on the road. (Once she had enough coffee. ;-))

Finally, kudos once again to the entire Woodson Art Museum staff and all their members and volunteers. The museum is an amazing resource and it's clear how dedicated they are to supporting their community, its educators, and its students. It's always a privilege working with such an amazing organization, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to introduce printmaking to a wide audience. Let's do it again some time!

Young Printmakers at the Woodson Art Museum: Week One

Ready for students in the Woodson Art Museum classroom.

And there goes February. Did you see it? Me, neither.

At the beginning of the month I headed off to Wisconsin and a two-week Visiting Artist Residency at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum. During my visit I worked with 150 students in grades 4-12, and about 30 adults, creating relief prints. I'm back in Maine now (with a rotten cold, go figure), but wanted to share some images from this great experience. There are TONS more photos on the Woodson museum's Facebook page if you're itching to see some.

During the first week of my visit the students traveled to the museum and during the second I traveled to their schools. This is a risky proposition in Wisconsin in February, but we were fortunate to have two weeks of clear (but cold) weather, especially since most of the participating schools were about an hour away from the museum.

Week One sessions included a quick visit to the main galleries of the museum and two concurrent temporary exhibitions: Wild Fabrications, which featured studio art quilts with an animal theme, and Explorations in Wood, which included both functional and sculptural works.

Looking for graphic patterns in art quilts. R Wunsch/LYWAM photo

While in the galleries, students were asked to looked for strong graphic pattern elements as well as aspects of animals that might be incorporated into their own designs.

Downstairs in the classroom we first drew thumbnail designs for relief blocks, then transferred the drawings and carved. We accomplished a lot in less than two hours!

Designing for repeating print patterns. R Wunsch/LYWAM photo

5th graders hard at work.

Next week... Printing!

But before printing week I also got to work with a couple of adult groups, including area teachers who were invited to a free printmaking workshop at the museum. (Complete with coffee and snacks!)

Beginning experiments

Oops! A couple of people are missing, gone to pick up some art supplies,
also provided by the thoroughly awesome Woodson Art Museum.

We treated the afternoon as an experimental print lab, trying simple two color reduction prints, different color combinations, and overprinting two different images.

I really enjoyed this afternoon with teachers and was grateful for the opportunity to facilitate some personal creative time and casual interaction among art education professionals.

Lest you think it was two weeks of all work and no play... I did get out for a few hours to do a little birding. One of the museum curators and his wife shared their Sunday with me... we picked up what I think were my lifer snow buntings and three snowy owls. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Stay tuned for Week Two and some amazing student work....

And now for something a little different

Here in Heart of the Rockies I'm still carving away for the next color pass on the bufflehead linocut, with periodic time outs for things like framing and packing finished prints. Later this week I'll venture up the Front Range and over the Continental Divide on a three-day road trip to deliver the aforementioned framed and packed work to galleries. More on this soon!

Since there's not much to see on my block, I thought I'd share some vintage relief printing from British Pathé. I love these old films, even with their eye-rolling narration. This one features print blocks carved by a woman wielding a router, the effective "beat-it-with-a-stick" method of creating flocked wallpaper, and William Morris designs. You're welcome.

Linocut in Progress: Carving

Yep, carving. That is all.

Sing it with me now: Carving, carving, carving linoleum.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Linocut in progress: Columbine Part 3

Who was it that said, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans"?

There's a lot of "life" happening here at the moment, which is putting a bit of a damper on my studio time and focus capacity. I had hoped to have this columbine linocut finished by now, but it's just poking along. Ah well...it is what it is, I guess.

Step 6

Here's a second darkish pass to start defining the background. I've decided that the upper background isn't going to have much more activity than it already has, although there will still be some darker bits in the lower background. Still have to sort that out.

Step 7

It's not particularly "normal" to go back and add a lighter color over a darker, but I neglected to work the centers of the flowers before I moved on to the background. It's okay, though... I rather like the tonal variety I got here. If I wanted a more solid yellow I could put a second layer here, but I think they'll be okay as is.

I might be able to wrap this up in two more color passes... it all depends on how the next one plays out. The background feels a bit too bright to me, so I'm going to try to tone it down. We'll see!

Im-pressive Week Rolled By!

What an adventure!

I returned late last night from my week-long residency at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin, tired-but-wired after a fantastic experience. Today has been spent in the usual post-trip tasks– plodding through mail and hundreds of emails, filing receipts, paying some bills... dumping the contents of my suitcase next to the washing machine.

So it seems like it's time to take a little break from all that and share with you some highlights from my week.  I took paltry few photos myself, but the good folks at the Woodson are on the ball. All the images here are courtesy of the museum.

We. Are. PRINTMAKERS!

Putting the final color on the magpie demonstration piece.

In the week preceding the steamroller event I worked with about 200 middle and high school students to create small relief prints in lino and foam, and shared a "slide" show and print demonstration with adult visitors. Wisconsin State Representative Mandy Wright came to class one morning and tried her hand at a little printing, too.

Good technique, Mandy!

But the Big Event loomed large in our thoughts. Fortunately "our" steamroller had been delivered right before I arrived in Wausau, so Wednesday afternoon the staff and I gathered in the parking lot for a test run.

That's Dave in the orange shirt. Great job, Dave!

Museum facilities staffer Dave Jones carved an image inspired by a sculpture by Charlotte Darling-Diehl. We inked up his block, fired up the equipment and voila! Our first steamroller print! 

We also ran a test of the 24 x 36-inch lino I carved here in my studio. Compared to the 36 x 48 blocks the students would bring it suddenly seemed a bit wimpy! 

View from the driver's seat.

But hey! It turns out one can print lino with a steamroller. It held up just fine under pressure.

Suddenly it all became real. We were going to do this! (And it was going to work!) Wednesday night I was a happy camper and couldn't wait for Saturday.

And then came Thursday. 
Cloudy... rainy... cold Thursday. Snow in the forecast for parts of Wisconsin which might or might not include Wausau. I tried not to worry too much.

And then came Friday. At noon on Friday the trees on the museum grounds wore a blanket of ice. Freezing rain slicked the grass. I adjusted my expectations from "good weather" to "not horrible weather."

It took me a good 20 minutes to find the courage to lift the curtain and look outside Saturday morning. Not raining... Good. Not windy... excellent. And dare I imagine it? The clouds seem to be thinning. All systems go!

By noon the sun was out and we were off and running. I mean rolling. Over 100 area high school students had worked in teams to carve the 3x4-foot woodblocks, and we had 19 to put under the steamroller. 

Inking begins!

Moving the inked block into place

Placing the fabric

Pulling a print!

Wall of wonderfulness. Eventually we had prints all the way down the block! Click to embiggen.

After we pulled two prints each, the teen artists inked up their blocks again and we had great fun making steamroller t-shirts. Several observers asked if we had shirts for sale, which we hadn't considered... but who knows? Maybe next time!

Once the prints have had a little time to dry, they will be put on display at the museum... dates TBD.

In the meantime, check out the art blog of D.C. Everest High School, whose students were among those who participated in the project. Pop on over to WJFW TV-12 to see yours truly try to explain just what the heck all this is about in a video report here. AND.... there are hordes of photos on the museum's Facebook page here.

There is no way I can sufficiently express my gratitude to the staff and volunteers of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum for their support of this project and for making a random conversation into an amazing week. I'm pretty sure that if you look up the word "excellence" in the dictionary, you'll find all of their faces smiling back at you.

Thanks also to the funders: The Community Foundation of North Central Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the B.A. & Esther Greenheck Foundation. And let's not forget the food-ers! Thanks, Urban Street Bistro for firing up the grill for the event. Next time I want to eat one of everything. Except the cupcakes. I want two of those.

Linocut demo: Gerenuk

With the clock ticking and my Woodson Art Museum residency looming it was imperative that I get a demonstration piece started this week. The smartest idea, of course, would be to choose a simple image. Big, graphic shapes. Not too many colors. And, HONEST, I thought this would be that piece when I started. Really I did.

The gerenuk is an antelope native to East Africa... which is, of course, why I found them at the zoo in Denver. They are crazy, skinny, ungainly things to draw, but they have sweet tan faces with big, white circles around their big, brown eyes. A portrait might be nice.... and "just" three colors. Basically. Mostly. Kind of.

First carving of the linoleum block. For the brightest whites, of course. Rolled up in a transparent blue-gray ink to create some shadows.

Not much to see here, but the first color went fast. "Simple," I told myself. Again.

Second carving. Pay no attention to all those little lines I started drawing. This is a simple image.

Second color printed. Piece of cake. Now for some fun... the orange-y tan color of the overall face and neck.

Good. Great. Nice. Three colors down, breezing right along.

But, wait....

This is a mammal. It has fur. Fur would look cool. I can't just leave a big flat shape, can I?

Apparently not.

Simple.

Print nostalgia with Linotype:The Film

In one of my former lives I worked in a commercial print shop. I did paste-up with hot wax and an X-acto knife, and I set type on a machine something like this one:

Thanks, Marcin Wichary and Wikipedia.

This might be a newer model than the one I used, because it appears to have a slot for 8" floppy disks, and ours used cartridges of some sort. But you get the idea. A single line of type appeared on the screen... not in the font one was using... just a pixel-y little line that disappeared into the techno-ether once a certain number of characters were typed. For you youngsters out there, each letter was flashed onto photosensitive film, then processed chemically to paper. Until the type galleys came out of processing, one didn't know if the entire paragraph had been accidentally typed in boldface. Our machine didn't have a "Save" feature... so mistakes had to be typed and processed all over again.

I had a love-hate relationship with that machine. Mostly hate. And I was delighted when "desktop publishing" appeared, allowing me to see entire pages of type at once and to make corrections quickly and easily.

But as a printmaker, and a relief printmaker at that, I often feel a nostalgia for the "good old days" of wood or metal type. I have a few pieces that I've found here and there– and one of these days when I get Presszilla into a workable space of her own I hope to invest in some complete alphabets– but I've never personally set type by hand. (Well, there WAS that rubber stamp set I had as a child... The one with tweezers and tiny individual letters you set into a frame.) As a type geek I'm a dilettante, but I think my days as pilot of the beast above give me enough street cred to be delighted by Linotype: The Film. My own copy arrived here mere days after the DVD was released...

I hope you have a few minutes to take a look at the trailer, and if you have an opportunity to see the entire film, I encourage you to do so. It's great fun... and if you don't believe me, just ask Etaoin Shrdlu. (More clips are available on the film's website.)



"Linotype: The Film" Official Trailer from Linotype: The Film on Vimeo.

Another tool for the Plan B arsenal

During the process of working a reduction block I frequently make "mistakes" that cause me to rethink my next steps for carving and printing. Most are small and they're either not critical or they're solvable through subsequent ink passes. Every once in a while, though, I make a mistake on the LAST pass... and that takes a bit more headscratching.

A few days ago I printed what I expected would be my second-to-last color on this autumn landscape linocut. I wanted a little more interest in the middle-ground dark trees than just a flat color, so I thought a few highlights would do the trick.

So far, so good.

But for some reason I just couldn't wrap my head around how to make the sort of marks I wanted for the highlights, so when I started printing the final color it just looked too spotty and busy. The marks were too similar to those in the background.

Okay, I thought. I'll just join some shapes together and vary them more and it will be fine. So I carved some more and printed again.

Ick.

These shapes seemed overbearing, and rather than bring dimension to the trees, they seemed to flatten out. What the heck?

And then I realized what the problem was. The trunk of the second-from-left tree had been cut out at the wrong step... and the background green was showing through the middle of the tree instead of the highlight color. Damn.

There are ways to fix these things. It's possible, for example, to "pounce" color over an area with a brush and stencil (a technique called pochoir)... but I'm not experienced with pochoir, and the idea of having to do that over an obvious area in the entire edition with unknown results was not appealing.

This looked like a job for wood filler.

I've never used wood filler to repair a block, so this also seemed a bit risky, but I figured I could always carve it back out again if it didn't work and try something else.

Who knew there were so many kinds of wood filler? I stood in front of the shelf at our local hardware store for a longer period of time than I expected, and finally settled on this small tube of Elmer's brand "Carpenter's Wood Filler." I applied several "mooshings" of filler in the cracks... each time it dried it shrank (shrunk?) a little.

Then I sanded it smooth. The patch still seemed a bit shallow at this point, but I am not a patient person so I decided to go ahead and print anyway. I did recarve one spot that had gotten filled in during my overzealous application of goo.

Well, whaddaya know? It worked. Probably would have worked better if I had applied filler one more time-- I had to rub a little harder on the patched spots to get good ink transfer because they were just a skosh lower than the rest of the block surface-- but in general it worked out just fine. It's not a technique I intend to employ on a regular basis, but it's good to have in the arsenal of back-up plans.