second play with wood .....

I had no idea that there could be so much fun to be had with wood prints.  Until recently I had no interest whatsoever in making woodblock prints until I saw what Ann Symes was doing with Japanese woodblocks  - bringing her own unique interpretation of technique and design to her work.

I hesitate to send you scurrying over to her website, as once you look at her prints in the portfolio you will realise how elementary my marks are - but everyone has to start somewhere.  I only have black, white and paynes grey water based printing inks and as yet have not tried doing any work with the watercolours and gouache which will enable me to work with very soft and subdued colours.

Like everything we do it is important to learn the techniques and then find a way of using them with some authenticity - I have yet to do either but think that after another experimental morning, I now know what I will be looking for in the way of wood texture before I head down onto the block with Steve and the chainsaw!  I am also thinking I will be more confident now to work in situ when I see gorgeous marks on logs that are way too large to bring up hear the house. I am really looking forward to trying to lift some of the calligraphic marks made by scribbly gum borers around the yard.  Will have to go for an explore and make a mud map of all the logs and marks I want to 'lift'.

A slab of wood that I have had lying around the studio which I have used for displaying some of my books.

Not all that easy to ink the wood as it is curved and does not take happily to the roller.  I love the colour of the wood showing through the soft greys.

Starting to work out what makes for interesting texture, and to go in harder and work some areas into darker shades.

This photo is too dark really - I was braver here rubbing part of the print then turning the paper around and lifting off areas on other parts of the block.  I like the overlays.  

The next couple of photos show up the wood texture much more effectively and accurately.

I cut up strips of the work that came out of my first play earlier in the week.  I can see how effective multiple techniques will be.  I like my images all to appear on one surface though, not collaging them, so I will need to find ways to print my etched marks, wood marks and rubbing all on one piece of paper. I don't think that will be too difficult - or I hope not.

Just having fun with overlapping pieces of very light weight papers.

Camera bogun - there is no blue here really! But I quite like it .....

Lots of bits with which to play.

first play with wood .....

Tuesday morning of this week I was able to have some time with my friend Steph in her gorgeous bush hidden studio to have a play with wood prints.  Both of us are working on projects to do with our land in various ways and have been keen to use marks from trees that have been felled on our properties over the years.  I am keen to use these marking as overlays for etchings I am in the process of compiling to do with 'My Place' - Steve's and my acreage.  I am working toward doing about seven metres of printing with overlays which will then wrap around a corner of our living area.  This is all still in my head though much of the work I have been working on in the last little while has been a preparation for the kinds of marks I am wanting to make and use in this body of work.  I anticipate this project taking the best part of a year to complete so am in no rush.

This piece of fence post had been prepared by Steph by the time I got there.

I brought along a piece of laminated pine which I thought would be fun to play with.

The two photographed together and looking the best they did all day!

So after sanding with an orbital sander and then using a 1200 fine piece of sandpaper by hand, the wood was then burnt and then shellacked.  Being pine the wood burnt quickly and it was evident that this was going to print very graphically.

Which it did - image on the left, and so I did a few more overlay prints to try and make it more interesting.
 Which it wasn't!

This was my first pull from Steph's block and you can see my bad rubbing techniques (novice that I am).

Some over printing which looked way more interesting.  What I actually really love is the very delicate marks of the timber which reveal as fine white line.

I really like the cracks and lines in the timber.  In this exercise though I used an embossing needle to draw some of my own marks (the curly wiggly ones in the white space of the right) and have worked out that that is something I can do to 'own' the technique but make it feel more like me.

I like the softness of this edge - and you can see a few of my marks on that bottom edge.

Because we were working with water soluble ink, and given that I did not like the graphic pine prints at all, I decided to spray some water on the print and mess it up a little.

Much better!  I have worked out that if I do actually use some timbers where I get a really graphic ring pattern, I could actually then use a brush and bleed areas and soften then intentionally and work towards something wonderful.

I see much potential here for experimentation.

And then because I had sprayed water to effect on those former prints, I decided to spray the front of this print (the view is actually from the backside) which was quite a heavy print and held no charm for me.  The right side still looked uninteresting to me but when I turned it over, these gorgeous soft images emerged, with lovely soft bleeding edges and more evident markings which I had made.  None of this is finished work by any means but the morning's experimentation gave me plenty of food for thought and I can hardly wait to experiment some more.

I like this result and will work on making whole images like this.