Takach brayer.

For quite some time I've been worried about post-graduation printmaking. It's something that I love to do and yet, with the exception of some woodcarving tools, I don't have any of the tools and materials to do any of it. I've been pretty content to use the school's supplies, complaining the whole time when another student wouldn't take care of or clean the community supplies. Having now graduated I find myself in a bit of a pickle. But thanks to my amazing in-laws, I am now one step closer to home-printmaking. As a graduation present they pulled out all the stops and bought me a brayer. Not just any brayer but the queen-mother of all brayers, a 4-inch Takach Brayer. I can't find the words to express how excited I am about this. Now I just need to sell a couple prints so I can buy some ink and paper and figure out how to hand-print so I can take advantage of said brayer.

"Capital G Potatoes"

I just finished this print last night and thought I might go through the start-to-finish with you. It all starts out with an idea in my sketchbook. In this case you're getting something special because you get my idea and also some vegetables that I drew and some weird squid-thing (does anybody else look back in their sketchbook and wonder what their train of thought was at the time?). You'll notice that the mushroom has a mean face, that's because mushrooms are mean. I don't like them. I'm pretty obsessive-compulsive about the whole process and from the beginning I figure out composition and at least the ballpark where my colors will play. I figured out that I was going to carve two blocks and what would come from each of the blocks and then I started carving.

First thing I did was put the brown in the background of the portrait. I added some vertical lines to break it up a little bit and kept the brown pretty transparent so it wouldn't be too overpowering but help separate it just a little bit from the wallpaper. Then I laid down the light gold color that would end up as highlights in the frame and the lighter color in the pattern. The pattern was heavily inspired by a pattern I saw on a poster in Switzerland last summer.

From there I cut out a stencil that would cover the frame so I could finish the wallpaper and not get any green on the frame. After the two greens were run all I had left with that block was the darker gold color in the frame.

Now, one thing I've learned about registration: when working with multiple blocks it's generally easier to wait until you're finished carving the one block, trace the image from the actual print and then transfer what you need on to the second block. When I haven't done this I've noticed that quite often things tend to shift a little bit during the carving and then you end up with areas that don't register as nicely as you may want.

My original plan was that the second block would only be the grey, used for shadows and as fill for the fur, and the black linework which would (hopefully) pull everything together. But after printing a couple with everything black (including the linework around the frame), my teacher, Kathy Puzey, suggested that I do a darker brown on the frame because it was too harsh a contrast with the warmer colors that were in the frame and were taking away from the portrait itself. And so one last color quickly became two, but in the end I think it turned out quite nice.

And here it is. A print of a portrait of my cat, Capital G:

Graduation and a lot of other people's work.

I guess this means I graduated. Now what, you ask? That's a valid question. Find a job, that's as far as I've gotten. My website is now up. Go to woodandpixels.com. I've got a list of things that I've got to do in the next little while to get it all finished up but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

Yesterday being the lazy Sunday it was I decided to go through some of my stuff. I pulled out a bunch of the work I have that isn't framed and laid it out to see how much room it would take up when it's not stacked on top of itself. My goal is to someday hang all of it salon-style in my house. The sad thing about this is that there are still quite a few of my friends that I don't have any of their work and need to get some. That, and I need to convince Nicki to mount my deer like she did her own for the BFA show.

Here are all the prints from the last print exchange I took part in. We teamed up with Montana State University and had theme "What would a woodcut cut if a woodcut could cut wood?" or something along those lines. I apologize for the crappiness of the picture but if you look closely you should be able to see that there are a few in there that are pretty freaking good.

I really don't like this layout. I like the pictures left-aligned but I also don't want the text to wrap around it. I guess this will have to do until I get a new blog done with Wordpress.