Whew!

I headed down to the studio, armed with my Plan B and expecting failure. However, as you can see, all is well!

....so far.

But I've learned -- again! --that patience is the most important tool with reduction woodcut. 

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking on this print, or I'd give each color 5 days of drying. I'm hoping 48 hours is enough. We're well into the rainy season right now, so the humidity is a huge issue.

Hoping to print ochre Thursday. After that, we get into the blues!

 

Napping Cat Press: A Fresh Start For 2022

 This was my first woodcut, made in January or February of 2022, twenty years ago. I recently took about 4 years away from focusing on printmaking to work on learning cartooning. I am hoping that all that I have learned through my cartoon study will enrich my printmaking.

The print seen here is my first woodcut (though I had done a few early attempts at relief printing using a potato). Amy hates it. I can see why. But I love it because it was the door through which I entered an amazing, fulfilling world of reduction woodcut printmaking. I had a pine board from a bizarre attempt to become a carpenter 6 months earlier, and Amy had a few bottles of fabric paint. The only tool I had to cut with was Amy’s dad’s old rust X-acto craft set. I manipulated a picture of Amy to high-contrast and printed it out on our printer, and traced. It would several months before I began doing prints from my own drawings. But at this moment, when I pulled the paper off of the block, it was like I was struck by lightning.

This print represents the moment that I found my path.

Now I am back in the studio, ready to get back on that path, and I invite you to join me in a very special journey.

The Sky Is Falling..Into Place

Nothing adds life to a woodcut sky more than a good rainbow roll. Even though not much of the sky will show, that gentle gradation will, I hope, sell the end of a long day for a weary traveler stopping for the night. When I get all of the darker brick colors in, I think the sky will pop. One
 

"Harbor Lights"

Eleven color reduction woodcut print, "Harbor Lights." I'm very, very happy with how this turned out. I wish I had been bolder in the sky colors, but I wasn't going for the bleeding sky of Munch's "The Scream," but more the gentle sunset of a warm summer evening on Lake Erie. But I've opened up a new avenue for the use of bright pigments in my work.

Field of Dreams

Several years ago my wife and I were driving to East Aurora to see a movie. We love to take the country roads for the scenery. There is a farm just outside of town that is beautiful in any season (even the godawful endless Western New York winters). That summer, there were two haywagons and a tractor out in the field, just begging photographers. We stopped and started snapping photos, expecting to enter the into the Erie County Fair. We never did. I came across the photos last week, and they were demanding artistic attention. I recently constructed a new jig for printing that allows me to use rainbow rolls (the blend of color in the sky; also used for the grass and trees). I'm very happy how this 9x7 8 color print went.

Dry In Time

I was able to get "Amy's Hill (7 color reduction woodcut) ready in time to enter for the Erie County Fair creative arts competition. I'd love to revisit it when I have more time to spend -- I really pushed myself here, as I was also on a 90-day cartooning quest.

I'm happy with it overall, but I can see all the places where I rushed. I'm currently designing a jig that will allow me to do rainbow rolls again -- the gradation of color helps to give the impression of depth. But I love the colors and the movement -- the sense of movement in the grass. I think the seed buds of the grass came out really well. The clouds would have looked much better on a graded sky.

Also up for consideration is "Canyons of Buffalo." I'm really feeling the pull back to the studio, so I'm hoping to report more on here.

Hope you can make it to the Erie County Fair this year, and please stop into the Creative Arts building (in the grandstand) and see what your friends and neighbors have been up to. Careful though -- you may get inspired!

A Fair Start

This time each year we go into overdrive, preparing our entries for the Erie County Fair. I've been entering woodcut since 2002, and I've done pretty well. This year I have been less active with printmaking, and have been devoting time to cartooning. However, something about 90 degree, 60% humidity sends me to the 73 degree, 39% basement. My wife has been wanting me to do this one for some time...

As It Happened: "Canyons of Buffalo"

Almost Home

One last color will finish the job. This building, which still stands in the 600 block of Main St. in downtown Buffalo, opened as the Greyhound Bus Lines station in 1941. Designed by William S. Arrasmith, a St. Louis-based architect who designed hundreds of stations for the company, the station was operational until the 1970s. After a stint as a police station, the building, in the center of Buffalo's Theater District, now houses the Alleyway Theater.

I first noticed the building many years ago as I took the subway down Main St, probably returning from Buffalo State College. The rounded windows, curved edges and stainless steel stripe across the canopy, along with the blue tiles, suggested that it was a little too retro to be authentic, and I assumed, up until fairly recently, that it was a 1980s homage to art deco. But authentic it is, and I'm glad that it has kept most of it's charm. As you can see, the canopy, which I'm told was neon-lit, extended up ward and included a tlied sign for the company. The sign doesn't show well here, and it has long since disappeared, but the scar where it attached to the building next door is still visible.

Night Lights

"Sans Furniture" Reduction woodcut print, 8 colors, printed on Masa paper from single shina plywood block using Renaissance Graphic oil ink on an antique cast iron book press with additional burnishing via wooden spoon. Edition TBD. First print of 2018.

I love this print. Folks familiar with Hamburg know Sans Furniture, which has occupied a mid century modern building in the heart of the Village for my entire life time and beyond. While their bold storefront dominates on Buffalo Street, the rear Pine Street entrance, seen here, is cosier and more inviting. I pass by often at night on weary walks home from the bus stop, peering into the windows warm with the golden glow of artificial homescapes.

As a color mixer by trade, I'm most proud of the colors here. The sky, yellow gray with the aura of street light, the warm interior. The ceiling was a crap shoot -- I left it unfinished in my drawing, unsure how to execute.

It may be my most favorite print yet.

Back & Forth

Years ago I worked in a shop with a talented printmaker who had studied under Frasconi. He showed me a number of his large portrait woodcuts, intricate and beautiful. The backgrounds, however, were just a series of scribbles made with a Steel. He commented that after the portrait was complete, he got bored. I get that, and the struggle with background is real.

I have struggled with background since I was in grade school. How tedious to detail what's BEHIND your subject. And too much detail camouflages the subject.

Luckily, I also study cartooning, and that has helped me immensely. Take any cartoon, and you will see most are not detailed, and instead they use spare symbols to impress upon a viewer the IDEA of what the symbols represent. Three rectangles in a blank field is a wall. A squiggle represents water, a few jagged spikes may be grass.

To that sensibility, I added an old technique I learned in kindergarten, but I've found traces it's roots to the surrealists: scribble drawings. I used the same technique with the Newt print, and found that it gives much depth. I imagine you will see more of this as I go.

This print was more an exercise than a work, but I'm quite happy with it. I'm very happy with the colors. I'm obsessed with photographing flowers, but I still haven't developed that as a skill for printmaking, thus the more abstract impression seen here.

Maroon Loon

The second color, the eponymous maroon, went down nicely.The foundation colors are important, but you can't really see much going on until the dark colors go down. Usually, the darker colors go on way down the line, but since this is a night picture, the dark comes on quickly.

I'm still getting used to the linoleum. It cuts wonderfully, but it's easy to dent the block around the lines, so I have to keep the tools sharp. I also don't need to cut as deep as with the wood. I also need to refine the jig I use to print, as it's causing crimping of the paper in the corners. These are pretty easy issues to resolve, I think. Right now, I am just having fun doing the work, something I've been missing for a while. It's good to be back.

I Blue It

HA! That's what I get. yesterday, I was feeling quite confident: The colors were vibrant, the register dead-on. I was once again, in my mind, the Bad Boy of Block Printing. Then I went home to find that I am actually the Boy of BAD Block Printing.


Okay, that's a harsh self criticism, and I have already completed the post-mortem to find what went wrong. And, to my credit, I did stop after I saw the first horrible, horrible print.


That dark color you see in the print, that's actually a beautiful Ultramarine Blue. Do not adjust your monitor. Yes, it is comparable to Portland Black...when printed over something, like, say, scarlet. The reason, of course, is that the ultramarine is as clear as water. What annoys me is a) I've done this exact thing before [some nine years ago] and b) I saw how transparent it was on the plate.


So, I have done some research, and have found a way to get the results. Stay tuned for that in coming days.


I was also surprised that the ink wasn't covering as nice as previous layers. Remember what I said about drying times yesterday? Well, I guess I was right on that.

So, I'm coming away a bit smarter (hope it sticks with me this time). However, as the ink technician and "color expert" for a commercial printing company, I sure do feel like a doofus.

Bright Idea

So, as we can see, printing a bright color over a bright color tends to keep the colors, well, bright. I'm really happy with the colors and how the ink is laying down this time.

I'm working from a pencil drawing, and am actually using no photographic references for the colors. Growing up in Western New York, I like to think I know a little something about fall colors.

That said, yellow and orange are pretty easy. The hardest color I've designed for this print may well be the red. Think for a minute: what is an ideal autumnal red color? Is it the deep maroon of big old maple leaves? The bleeding red of sumac? Rust? Fire?

Oh, man, I think I just panicked myself! Stay tuned!

Eight states and I just can't wait.