Gingersnap Woodblock Print

Gingersnap

7" X 9" woodblock print

2009

It took two blocks of wood and a sore shoulder from carving, but I finally got this cock-eared, wild-eyed, live-wire on paper.

My How-To of Woodblock Printing

This blog is dedicated to my mother, who can't imagine what in the world a woodblock print is or how in the heck I make one!

YinYang Piglets

10" X 10" woodblock print

2009

This project began with a photograph I took at the Blue Hill Fair last September—two tiny piglets snoozing in a bed of wood shavings. (I wonder which one of them is named Wilbur!)

The way they cuddled together reminded me of the yin-yang symbol and spawned the idea for this woodblock print.

Yin = the passive, female cosmic element, force, or principle that is opposite but always complementary to yang.

Yang = the active, masculine cosmic principle in Chinese dualistic philosophy.

Typically, I began with a mistake, but I learned a lot from this impetuous first carving.

I liked the black piglet better than the white one—his clean lines, his simplicity, his sharp ears, curly tail, and tensile nose—and I decided that both piglets should be the same—mirror images of each other—one white, the other black. I also decided that the circle should be complete. Thus, the woodblock had to be square. Enter Tom, husband and helpmeet, who cuts all my blocks to size for me on his table saw.

I redrew the images and taped them to my new woodblock. It’s a piece of cabinet-grade, half-inch, birch plywood. Notice that the white piglet is on the right and the black piglet is on the left. When I print them the images will be reversed.

I used carbon paper to transfer the image from the paper to the block and a compass to draw the concentric circles. I outlined the lines on the black piglet, to show me what I had to carve out, and darkened in the lines on the white piglet to show me what I had to carve around.

Here is the set of woodblock carving tools that I use. (I forgot to have Tom photograph the carving process. Next time!)

I began by carving out the background around the piglets.

Then I carved the highlights out of the black piglet. It was much easier to carve out the slivers of white space on the black piglet than it was to carve out around the slivers of black space on the white piglet. In fact, I carved out a few too many black slivers on my little girl. I thought I was quite clever in replacing them with superglue. WRONG! When I printed the woodblock, the superglue cut holes in the paper. I probably should have used a different kind of glue, or been a bit more careful in my carving.

I print my woodblocks on the kitchen table covered with the New York Times. What would we do without either! The first step is to load my brayer (the roller) with ink. The ink comes in a can, smells like shoe polish, and washes off with water. I spread it out on a sheet of glass.




Next I ink the woodblock.

I’m using Japanese mulberry paper and trying ever so carefully to place it just right. I need to work on this skill. My prints usually come out a bit whopper jawed!

I use a baren (a bamboo covered disk from Japan) mainly to stick the paper onto the block.

Then I use my favorite tool—a wooden kitchen spoon!—to press the ink into the paper. The paper is so thin that I can see the ink coming right through it, yet it’s so strong that I can really give it a good rubbing.

Finally, when my arm is ready to fall off, I pull the print off the block.



TA-DA!

I pulled ten prints of my Yin-Yang Piglets yesterday. I’ll be offering them for sale in my PenPets Etsy Shop.

First Woodcut of 2009

Shoat

6" X 8" woodcut
2009

Everyone seems to like pigs, so I've started my woodcarving year with this cheerful face. My carving skills have gotten rusty! It takes a while to wrap my pen-and-ink mind around woodblock carving. Instead of penning in the dark places, I'm carving them out. I will persevere!

I actually have quite a few little pigs in my piggery--both woodcuts and pen-and-ink drawings. Here's the whole cast of characters:

Harley Davidson

5" X 7" pen and ink

2008

Arnold Schwarzenegger

10" X 13" woodcut

2008

Porker

4" X 4" woodcut

2008

What's for Supper?

7" X 5" pen and ink

2007

Puddle Piglets

5" X 7" pen and ink

2007

Moku Hanga

I had a blast at the Moku Hanga workshop that I attended last weekend at the Zea Mays Printmaking Studio in Florence, Massachusetts. I learned so much about this traditional Japanese method of woodblock printing. Two days were not nearly enough to assimilate and practice all the new techniques. My head is spinning with ideas and I can't wait to get the additional tools that I need to continue printing multi-colored woodblocks.

Here is Annie Bissett, our guru, demonstrating how to mix inks. There were nine participants in the workshop, all fabulous artists, all fun to work with, all inspirational. The studio was spacious and full of light. We each had our own work table and plenty of elbow room. Annie was a constant source of wisdom.

Here I am carving one of my four blocks for the four colors in my print -- yellow, red, blue, and black.

Now I'm inking the first block in yellow.

I carved Kento marks in the corner and bottom edge of each of my four woodblocks to help me place the paper just so on each block.

Finally, I rubbed the back of the paper with a baren to press the ink from the woodblock into the paper. And, Voila!

Here's my first Moku Hanga wooblock print. Not the undisputed masterpiece that I had intended to create, but a start. I hope there will be many more to come.

For more photos of the workshop, check out Annie Bissett's wonderful blog, woodblockdreams.

What a Week!

On Sunday my brother Brian came for a five-day visit from California. In the 26 years since I moved from California to New England, Brian has never visited me at my house, so it was a momentous occasion!



Here we are in our blaze orange (the month of November is deer-hunting season in Maine), standing in front of Tom's "Dow Jones Industrial Wood Pile." By the way, Tom had one personal essay published this week and another accepted for publication!




On Monday I took down my month-long show at the Blue Hill Co-op: Community Market and Cafe. I called it "Faces from the Farm." It included 12 original pen-and-ink drawings and seven woodblock prints -- all farm animals (well, except for the black bear). I got tons of good feedback on the exhibit and sold eight pieces -- a personal best for me!

Later that day I delivered two new portraits. I love Scout's sweet sense of yearning (I understand that he's quite the moocher of treats!) and King's goofy dignity.

Scout

10" X 8" pen and ink

2008

King

7" X 5" pen and ink

2008

On Tuesday WE ELECTED A NEW PRESIDENT!

This is a woodblock print by my favorite Moku Hanga artisit, Annie Bissett. I'll be taking a course with Annie at the end of this month to learn how to create woodblock prints in COLOR!

On Thursday I attended the opening of "Noah's Ark Revisited: Part II," a multi-artist, multi-media exhibit of living creatures at the Deer Isle Artists' Association. I have three woodblock prints in the show.

If I look worn out in this picture, I am! Brian left Friday morning and I'll get back to my drawing board this week.

Heee Haw & Oink!

Donkey

4" X 4" woodcut

2008

Pig

4" X 4" woodcut

2008

Everyone seems to warm to donkeys and pigs, so here are two more for my barn yard collection. The donkey is Abijah, and he was mine, all mine, for one wonderful year before we moved to Maine. Alas! We have no pasture land on this our rocky bit of shelf, so I had to leave Abijah behind. Broke my heart!

This poor porker lost more than he bargained for on my chopping block. Wood carving is an unforgiving medium. Once a smile line or a chinny-chin-chin or a background detail is removed, it's gone for good! I touched up Porky with one of my pens. Probably highly unethical in the world of woodblock printers. I'll have to find out about that.

I keep working small because I have a whole bag full of little Shina plywood blocks that I got from McClain's and it cuts so nicely. Pretty soon I'm going to order some GREAT BIG BLOCKS and expand my vision!

Back to Woodblocks

My package from McClain's Printmaking Supplies arrived last Thursday! -- a Namisei Six Tool Set, a grab bag of small Shina plywood blocks, the "Moku Hanga Primer: Making Woodblock Prints" by Robert McClain (founder of McClain's), and a leather honing block to keep my tools sharp. Here are my new tools. Aren't they pretty! Below the tools is the "bench hook" Tom made for me to hold my blocks in place while I carve with both hands on the tool. Much safer that way! On the bench hook are the first two shina plywood blocks that I carved -- two lizards and a turtle. (The lizards didn't turn out well enough to post!)

Robert McClain writes: "Keep in mind that Moku Hanga [Moku = wood; Hanga = print] medium lends itself to bold, flat, and sharply delineated designs. The results will look quite different from, say, delicate pen-and-ink sketches." With that in mind, I carved this turtle--bold, flat, and sharply delineated, and, yes, he IS quite different from my pen-and-ink drawings, but such a sweet little guy! Yesterday I made a print run of ten copies, using kitchen spoons--first a wooden one, then a silver one--to rub the back of the printing paper and force the ink up off the woodblock and onto the paper. Whew! It was hard work! Think of the artists who hand-rub a hundred prints at a time! Who needs to lift weights! By the way, anybody want a turtle?

Turtle

3" X 4" woodcut
2008

Of course, I couldn't stick to the simple design concept that Robert McClain recommends. So I tackled this ram next, a design I probably couldn't master with one of my finest pens much less my new carving tools! When will I learn?

Ram

6" X 8" woodcut
2008

I carved this "horny" fellow on Birch plywood. It doesn't cut quite as easily as the Shina ply does, and it was harder to ink for printing. I'm only half-satisfied with the results. I like the nose and mouth, but the horns look stiff, not nearly as fluid and majestic as they are in Holly Merrow's great photograph.

Big Horn

Holly Merrow

I'm also thinking that I should have left out all his curls in favor of pure black wool. His eye gets lost in all those squiggles. That would have made for a much simpler design. Maybe I'll have to carve him again.

I've just read a book about Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), the great Japanese Ukiyo-e printmaker and painter, famous for his "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji" and "The Great Wave of Kanagawa." When he was an old man Hokusai said to his daughter: "I don't want to die yet! When I was seventy-three I understood the very substance of nature, animals, flowers, birds, and insects. When I was painting them it seemed to me that they would fly away from my paper. They were so vividly and realistically painted. But it was the engraver's fault that they couldn't fly away . . . If only the gods would give me ten or at least five years more, I could become a perfect artist." Hokusai died at age 89 having created at least 35,000 pictures and illustrated 169 books. By Hokusai's reckoning I have at least another couple of decades before I can expect my horns to curl off my paper the way his cranes fly away from his!

Cranes Nearby Mount Fuji

Katsushika Hokusai

A WOODblock Print!

The ancestrial carving tools arrived last weekend and here they are! They belonged to my husband's Great Aunt Fan, who lived at Washington Square in New York City next door to Edward Hopper. She summered in Port Clyde, Maine, in a shore-front cottage she named "Christmas Tree." Aunt Fan once wrote a letter to Albert Payson Terhune, author of Lad, A Dog, to ask what kind of dog would best suit her lifestyle. He recommended a Scottie and she took his advice. I think Aunt Fan did relief carving and chip carving with these tools. I don't think she did any woodblock prints, but look what I've done with them!

Canadian Goose

4" x 6" Woodcut
2008

This goose came to dinner one night at the Irandar, a 40' wooden trawler that belongs to our friend Irving. We go cruising in British Columbia with Irving on his lovely boat each summer for ten days. Irving is a fabulous chef, but the goose and her gaggle of friends were quite happy with a box of Cheerios. Here's Irandar anchored in Frances Bay, Desolation Sound. Irving is filming the skyline from the stern.