Branching form: prints

I am learning more about woodcuts and the Jubilee Wood and Tree Following projects will give me some good subjects to play with.  These are two prints from earlier this week. One a monoprint, the other a woodcut. I am using a simple branching shape to experiment with techniques… interesting.

Chris the Frog

My Easton group had a wonderful day on Friday tackling a woodblock print. Their results were excellent, some even managing two colours which is some going for just a few hours.

A few stage one prints from the class.

Chris the Frog
I had printed up a few variations of the Frog as a demo using the same very basic materials we would be using in the class, a spoon, a baren, computer paper, tissue paper, some cheap Japanese rice paper and basic acrylic printing inks.

The first plate.

Various combinations of paper and inking.

The frog is called Chris because I had unwittingly cut a rather nice letter C in one of the spots.. it seemed fitting..

In the garden there are still many tiny froglets around the pond fringes Mowing is a nightmare and very very slow. I have to carefully pat the grass to alert them and help the very tiniest ones to get to safety. The long grass must seem mountainous to them.. I rather know how they feel.

Here is one on the very tip of my grubby fingers.. I am wondering how they will survive the winter.

Frog colour roughs and plate 1

In the end I decided on this design. 

and a few colour roughs to think about two colours.

 

I cut the block to the accompaniment of frogs singing from the herb bed..

Wood block plate 1.. A4

Adder woodcut: a bit more development

I have returned to the adder woodcut and made another plate to add some foliage to the image. It is, as Laura said, not a difficult process but it is a process, and requires you to work in a methodical set of steps, even before you get to the cutting.

My original idea was to look at the patterns of the grass, leaves and the snake’s markings but that had to be simplified for the workshop day.

 
Workshop day design with a shaded background. 3 plates 

Now I can add another plate and try different colour combinations.
That is the joy of making separate plates and not doing a reduction. I now have 4 plates. One background, one snake, one snake pattern and one leaves.

My new woodblock plate with foliage.

  

The new block proof. Background with leaves.

Four Block Print…. an many many possibilities

Winged, Horned and Spined:

I am Val Littlewood and next week I will be starting the first week of the Beautiful Beasts blog that I am sharing with Sue.  We will be taking a week in turn to explore the fabulous world of Beasts in prose, poetry and art. It will be a truly rich source of inspiration for our work.
I draw, paint print and make things. You can find more about me and my work at Pencil and Leaf and Printdaily.

And I am also very fond of bees so I have chosen my first and only woodblock print Fly Bee Night as an introductory image. It was made a couple of years ago and you can see my blog post here.

I had included Hardy’s poem at the time as I had been thinking about bees flying late into the night but it also reflects some of my own feelings about our tiny insect friends. An “August Midnight” seems a long way off at the moment, but the celebration of the “winged, horned and spined” will feature very much in my work. I am also hoping that the Earth may just reveal a few more of it’s secrets to me along the way. “Earth-secrets”… how lovely.

 August Midnight by Thomas Hardy 1899

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter--winged, horned, and spined -
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While 'mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
- My guests parade my new-penned ink,
Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink.
"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

Fly Bee Night. 2 colour woodblock print on hosho paper. 12 x 16 inches