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 You have arrived at your destination. "Motel DeSoto II" 9"X7" 12-color reduction woodcut, using Renaissance Graphics oil inks and Shina plywood on machine made sulfite paper.

This building has been demolished to make way for another vacant lot in Olean, NY. We we're lucky enough to see her shortly before a Buffalo development company bought her.  When I printed "Motel DeSoto" in 2013, I'd expressed hope that she'd be saved. No luck. She has a sister in Bradford PA of similar design, though the sign has been modernized.

 

This is actually the third time I've tried to do this scene. I originally started with blocks of bold color, and stopped after two colors because it wasn't my vision. The second try was more my vision, but not quite there. This latest pass, while much closer, still misses for me. So, we'll see where I am with it in 7 years!

There's much I like in MDII, and I've learned a great deal, which I'm excited to put into the next print.👃

Floating An Idea

Etsy shop is now back up. Just click on the picture of my press!

Whatever your impression of Buffalo, you haven't experienced it without a Kayak trip down the Buffalo River (not to confuse it with the Niagara River, on which a fellow DID try to navigate Niagara Falls once; that didn't go so well). A blend of rich history, the heroic reclamation of the land by nature, rust vs wood. Stop by the shop for more details!

Trouble Brewing

Ink wash shading is often thought of as a "New Yorker" Hallmark, even though the magazine publishes all manner of styles. I think one arrives at their style of shading by way of other art training. For me, I was always more comfortable with a paintbrush than a pen. I find the process of layering shading therapeutic. 

This was a fun print, and it was a lot of fun walking you through the process.



"Buffalo Greyhound" 2018 Jeffrey Dean
Reduction woodcut, image 9"x7", Renaissance Graphic oil ink on Masa paper, 10 colors printed from a single shina plywood block, pulled on an antique cast iron book press and hand spoon-fed. Edition TBD

A Stab of Color

I enjoy revealing prints to you one color at a time, because that's how I see it. Even though I know what the end image will be, I'm usually working off of a pencil and marker sketch. Like watching a Polaroid develop, printing each state reveals more and more, until at last the image is whole.

Here, you see the dome of the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens is complete, bright against a bright blue sky.

In the Club

Early last year, after years of promising myself I would, I participated in the Baren Forum's print exchange. You can view the participating prints in this exchange, and other exchanges by clicking http://www.barenforum.org/exchange/exchange_64/intro.html. Mine is center, second from the bottom. There was so much great work, and I feel both thrilled and unworthy to be among this group.

The River's End

I'm not sure if I'm done yet. I was considering one last color, a very dark purple/black, which would mostly be the trees and the river wall. But I don't know if it will really add much to the print.

I'm very happy with this print, so happy that I've worked out the ink that has plagued my work for so long. Had I known how well this would print, I would have taken a few more risks with detail. But, that's how it goes.

I confess that it's a bit safe for a competitive piece. It doesn't have the color of "Sunflower Farm" (2014) or the light-play of "Sweet Breeze" (2015). But it conveys a mood I often feel around Buffalo's big old industrial buildings.

I'm proud of the piece, mostly because of the registration. For a decade I've used a jig that often caused me problems while printing, and sometimes moved the register n mid print. I've gotten rid of all that in favor of a kento system, which has been a pleasure to work with.  To illustrate how dead-on the register is, look at the doorway of the silo on the bottom left. Inside the doorway is a little lite -- this little spot has held through 7 colors. I usually lose at least a quarter of my prints due to register. This time, I only lost one.

I will post it when it's all dressed up in a frame and ready for the Fair.

Opening The Blinds

Ever since I purchased my antique cast-iron book press in the fall of 2006, I've been struggling to master my process. Every step forward seemed to herald a step back. Through it all, I kep working on my artistic abilities, falling in deep mad love with cartooning and graphic novels. Occasionally, I would dive back into printmaking to test out some new theories  that I'd hope would open the doors to finally cracking the code to better prints.

Late last year I finally discovered the root of my issues: it's the antique book press itself. I know of only one other woodcut printmaker who uses one, and for good reason: the torque is not enough to allow a good smooth laydown of in. This, in addition to troubles with the wood I was using and even some ink problems, had me on the verge of leaving printmaking altogether.

Over the last year, I have studied other printmakers very closely. When you are self-taught and working alone, you need to be a good detective. You also need to be resilient. It's okay to give up, just as long as you start again as soon as possible. That's my MO: quit...for a minute.

So this week, I cracked the code. I'll get into it more in-depth later, but I have found the missing piece of the puzzle that allows me to use my press and still make prints with excellent coverage and true color saturation I demand. Here's a terrible photo of the print in mid-work. There are three colors left, and I'll be back then to give you more details, and I'll tell you how you can get a print for free!

Clarity

My very favorite thing about reduction printmaking, even ahead of near-perfect register, is the slow reveal. Yes, of course, I know what the final image is supposed to look out -- I work from a completed drawing. And even if I make changes as I go along, I still have a good idea about what it should look like.

But there's something about watching something happen. Maybe it's like watching a favorite movie you've watched before -- you know what's going to happen, but watching it develop is the joy. Maybe it's also like we used to stand around and watch our mom's shake a Polaroid until the image appeared (betcha some of you got a fine earworm now -- Hey, Ya!

So, with the third color down, I think it's pretty clear what we're going for, although there's going to be a lot more going on over the course of the next five colors.

The mystery animal will be much clearer after the next color goes down. I was very happy with my color choices on this one. Unfortunately, because of how I have my jig set, I'm getting crimping in the corners. However, I have designed jig modifications that should eliminate the issue.

Pink-A-Boo

This new print, which I first attempted last fall, is coming along nicely thanks to the education I got over the weekend regarding the limitations of my press. Here are the first two states, a pink and an orange.

The first color is the pink, and it illustrates very well the amount of work that goes into a reduction print. In reduction printing, you print a color and then carve away areas that you want to show as that color in the final print.


 For example, the pink is in four very small spots (in the picture at right, you can see them at the bottom center, under the white cut lines), but I needed to print the entire page pink. Then, after cutting the areas I want to stay pink, I printed the orange. These photos may not be strong enough to show where the pink does show. I could have printed the orange first, then printed the small pink areas somewhere down the road. However, I needed the pink to be as vibrant as I could make it, so I chose to print that first. Even so, the orange itself is only a small are of the print. However, the bulk of the print will be browns and tans, maybe a dark green if I'm feeling frisky. I couldn't print those first and expect the orange to be bright.

Press-ure Pointers

I have been printmaking for over 13 years now, and one of the things I love about it is that I always learn something. Every time I hit the studio, it's education.

Being self taught is freeing, but you are also hampered by your own unknowns. If you go down Path A, you will go directly to the wellspring of all knowledge. But if you don't know Path A is there, you can get lost in the woods pretty easily.

Of course, if you take Path A, you also miss all of the crazy stuff in the woods. So there it is.

Anyway, I belong to an online group of amazing artists known as Baren Forum. They've been to the font of knowledge and are kind enough to run cups back to us morons still crawling around in the weeds. As part of this group, I am encouraged to participate in the print exchanges, where up to 30 members exchange prints. I did participate, as you saw a few posts back. And it was such a great experience. But as I was going through the work of others, I was struck by how nice an opaque some of the prints looked. Some looked like screen prints, the ink was so dense and even, regardless of the paper used.

And that led me to some serious trouble shooting in the studio last night, and some serious internet investigation. And it all came down to one thing, the thing that makes everything in the universe work: pressure.

I use an antique cast iron book press, which I have just discovered offers a raction of the pressure that an etching press does. In fact, though I turn and crank that wheel as hard as I can, it gives less pressure than using a wooden spoon, which is how I used to make my prints back in the beginning.

Here is an example of spoon vs. press.

On the right is the coverage I get from a lightly-inked block. On the left is what the ink transfer is like using a wooden spoon to burnish the back.

Well, issues with my hands prevent me from going back to the spoon, and I'm not giving up printmaking. So, I have found that by inking the block a little more, and just making peace with the effect of less pressure on the block, I can get back to some solid work. We'll see, won't we?!

No Telling the Times, the Number of Times

Here we have the completed 4-color reduction linocut "Loon in Maroon" (2015). A remake of an original woodcut made in 2013.

Clearly I've made some strides forward. I learned a lot on this print, and I'm ready to get working on some original stuff after solving a few issues that arose in the printing.

I'm tempted to go back through my entire catalog and redo prints that failed as woodcuts. But what fun is that? Gotta move ahead.

So, of Maroon. I have a link on an earlier post that will take you to a video made for Ken Nordine's "Maroon" on Youtube. You may think you don't know Mr. Nordine, now in his 90s, but you do. He's a well-known voiceover artist, and you've heard him on plenty of commercials. He inspired Tom Waits to begin adding spoken word tracks to his albums, and they have worked together. 

His album "Colors" is mindblowing; it actually began as a series of radio spots for a paint company. Here is the poem in its entirety:


'Think of the times, the number of times, that you can make rhymes with that friend - maroon

There's the month of June - maroon

There's a singers croon - maroon

As she sings a tune - maroon

To an orange moon - maroon

Like a crazy loon - maroon

Please say prune - maroon

With a silver spoon - maroon

How high is noon? - maroon

Tell me soon, tell me soon, tell me soon, tell me soon

No telling the times, the number of rhymes, that we can make with our friend maroon

Platoon, cartoon, monsoon, lampoon, spitoon, baboon, octoroon, macaroon, baffoon, afternoon, opportune, pantaloon, immune.

Yeah, there's so many rhymes for good old maroon

I'm sure if you try you can think of a few that have slipped me by

See what you can rhyme with maroon

Do it soon, do it soon, do it soon'

------Ken Nordine, "Maroon."

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.

Dance By The Might of the Loon

Loon puns are hard. Luckily, the first color was not. I photographed this drying on the clothesline, backlit to show detail. The color is a very pale yellorange. Yes, yellorange. It will comprise the moon and the moon reflection.

Don't strain. The details will be clearer as the darker colors go down.

Erase The Past

Well, it's been a long winter in Western New York. I have a nice basement in which to work, but from December through April it barely gets above 60 degrees, which makes it pretty uncomfortable (though in July, that's exactly the temp I'd like it to be).

And, as the weather breaks and the heat rises, I get the pull to be down in the studio again. It's always a difficult start. Things run a little rough. I have to rearrange everything that got knocked out of the way during the mad rush to find Christmas decorations.

This year I have a little help. Back in January, when I was dreaming of the end of the most recent Ice Age (we've been 10 days snow free!), I signed up for a print exchange through an online printmakers group I've belonged to for the last dozen years. The deadline is today.

The print above is the third color of an as-yet-untitled print, one of the smallest I've done (not counting the Christmas ornaments from last November) (2.5x3" on a 5x7" piece of paper). The theme for the exchange was "Freedom of Expression." I batted around a few ideas, one which was pretty funny, but risque, and I have an odd sense of humor, so I went safe.

Hmmm. In creating a piece to celebrate freedom of expression, I chose to censor myself. That's very interesting.

Well, don't think too much on it, as I will be tackling that one at some point down the road. Still, the print I have is a pretty important departure for me in many ways. One, it's a pretty full concept piece, something I've attempted only a few times before (The print at right, conceived as a powerful anti-war print, remains unfinished; a planned 16-color beast  from around 2005 that I really wish I'd stuck with, though the little girl in the corner gives me the willies!).

The print above -- my very own left hand, by the way, immortalized in ink! -- demonstrates an artist removing the bars of injustice with an eraser. Pretty simple, gets the point across, I suppose. But wait til you see the naughty one!

Spudnik

When I discovered printmaking, I had just ended a 12-year chapter in my life devoted to writing bad fiction. I was desperately looking for a new outlet for my creativity. I'd been working as a prepress technician at a large local commercial printer which was, due to economic downturns and post-9/11 consumer wariness, heading for a massive layoff. They'd been very good to me, but I was first in line to be shown the door. Sensing this instability, I was looking in all directions for a trade to learn. In late summer 2001, I'd been flirting with carpentry, but I think I knew it wasn't going to work. Poor math skills and no real passion for woodwork, coupled with owning exactly two tools -- a hammer and a hand saw -- suggested that I was in big trouble. In January 2002, I started writing again, but found it terribly unfulfilling. It was a very ugly time, full of stress and doubt. It was also January, which is cold, white and awful anyway.

One night I lay in bed, trying to think of a direction, looking for some sign to help push me forward. I just began to fall asleep when I dreamed a quick image of a block of wood with an image carved in it, inked up and pressed on paper. My eyes flipped open, and my heart was racing. For a quick moment, I had thought that I'd invented woodcut printing. It sounds silly, but even though I was in the industry, and for a time in the 1990s even worked as a letterpress printer, I never knew the possibilities of printmaking. It was similar to a moment in 1987 when I was having dinner with my grandmother and her sister, and I mentioned wanting to be a writer, and I first realized -- again, silly to think now -- that people who wrote books got paid for their work, that it was a job (yes, debatable; but let's just say for now).

The next day I spent hours on the Internet researching woodcuts and printmaking, and names and images flooded my head, and it was wonderful. I'd found home. I went to the library and looked up every book on the subject (all three!).

And when it came time to press my dreams to paper, I used the only materials I had: a paring knife, a bag of potatoes, some of my wife's fabric paint, and some old newsprint.

The very first print was a goldfish (npot pictured). The second was the guitar, which I eagerly shared with my musician friend, Damon Pipitone, who promptly used it as artwork in the CD packaging for "Dark Guitar," an album from his band, "The Willies."

The third print was of a leaf, and it was printed in two colors. It has a very mid century design feel to it. Finally, I tried a bunch of grapes, printed in two colors. It was my first multi-color print, multi-block print.

A month after I discovered this world, I was carving the block with my brother's face on it. I created a quartet of prints for him for his office wall for his birthday, a take on Warhol. Here's another proof from that project, hand colored with sparkly fabric paints. I call it "Glam Rock Bill."

Hmmm...

The Poplar Kid

Planks a lot.

From the moment I began making woodcuts in the late minter of 2002, I've had a hard time explaining what
exactly a woodcut is. I usually end up comparing it to a rubber stamp. It is the same principal -- relief printing. But then, so is a finger print, but it would be wrong, I think, to consider every perp at the police station a "printmaker."

Sorry: "alleged" perp.

I've mentioned before that my first prints were made with a potato and some glitter paint. However, my first authentic woodcut was made with a plank of pine I had from a brief flirtation with carpentry. It was a print of my wife; as per usual, I thought it was lovely, she thought it was hideous. We are still married.

Very quickly, I discovered poplar. I don't know how I came to discover poplar -- maybe Internet research, maybe a book. I loved how sturdy it was. My first piece was 12"x12"x1/2", and my first print off of poplar was a very large Valentine's Day card for my critic...er, wife. This time, she loved it. That's not why I stuck with poplar, of course. Pine was easy to cut, but it was very splintery. And a little thirsty for the water-based inks I used at the time.

With the poplar, I switched to oil-based inks, and the combination was great. For reasons lost to me now, I switched from poplar to birch plywood. I think the deciding factor was a combination of crappy dull tools/idiot who couldn't figure out how to sharpen his tools. More the latter than the former. Birch plywood was great for me -- I could do almost all of my carving with an Xacto.

Why Ply?

I used 1/4" plywood, which meant that warping was a constant issue. Also, the wood was prone to very unfortunate splintering. I was also too often finding big knotholes in the sublayer, which ended up ruining a number of prints. A lot of printmakers swear by their plywoods, and I can see why. A lot also love their poplar. I went back to poplar a couple of years ago -- after learning how to sharpen my tools, of course.

I'm a believer in sustainable resources, when they work (I tried -- I really TRIED -- to use
a greener solvent for cleanup. It was awful. Sorry, Earth). And I do feel guilty carving up a plank of poplar for my prints, when linoleum is readily available.

This IS your father's linoleum.

Oh, didn't you know linoleum is a green resource? Yeah, it's kind of crazy -- I always thought it was rubber or plastic, but it's linseed oil and sawdust. Probably poplar sawdust. And I love  the look of linocuts -- the lines are so clean, and the impressions are so even. I may do a little linoleum this summer. But it will take a lot to get me to change my mind about poplar. I love how it works. I love that it's sturdy, and can hold up to the many carvings and prints that reduction printing imposes.

Linoleum done right: William Hays, "Quiet Night."

There are so many options for printmakers. I knew a guy who would find old cabinet doors in the trash and use them for woodcuts. I've made collagraphs with cut out styrofoam. The art of art is never locking yourself into one medium, one subject, one idea.

The print at left is a reduction linocut by artist William Hays. He is my printmaking hero. Check out his amazing work at: http://www.artfulhome.com/artist/William-Hays/8352

Etsy Store Reopened

Just a quick note to remind you that the etsy.com shop is back up for the new year. On my way home from work yesterday afternoon, I caught a V of over 50 Canada geese overhead. They were heading north; however, they seemed to be arguing loudly about the decision!

See You Next Year

It was an especially fruitful year in the studio. I'm excited about the new things I'll be posting in 2015. Please check back often for updates. Please note that the Etsy shop is now closed for the season. Please follow me on Facebook (as Napping Cat Press) or feel free to email me at nappingcatpress97@gmail.com.

Have a great holiday, and thank you all for a great 2014!
--Jeff

Sale Ends Sunday!

CHRISTMAS SALE ENDS SUNDAY 12/21/2014
Click on the press at the top of the page to get the great holiday deal! Order now for Christmas delivery!