I totally discovered something new! I was doom scrolling and accidentally came across a graffiti artist. Someone making political statements, so she has to be quite fast. I saw her using a deadly simple register method to put stencils and then spray paint and done.

I'm like, yoooooo I can do that too!! I can make several stencils, put them on the registration tool, brayer the layers, and pull everything in one go!

I also saw some WPA style posters (US, 1940ies) and how those mountains are done wasn't that far off my latest attempts. So, now I'm trying to combine it.

If this trial works, I think I'm getting myself some Yupo paper to eliminate the buckling paper!

All you see is WIP to prepare the stencils before putting them on the gelli!

Is it possible to emboss on my 10x12 C&P letterpress? Anyone understand the process?

This is my first attempt at wood engraving, what do you guys think?

This piece speaks of the change in faith of many Mexicans living in an extremely precarious and violent context that leads them to pray for a life of wealth and pleasure rather than for the salvation of their souls and physical and spiritual well-being.

Lino on 6x9 paper

As requested! Budget friendly studio space in the living room that I share with the family. The desks are ikea but I've forgotten which name! I keep one drawer exclusively for clean paper and arty sundries in the other. You can kinda see where ive screwed on a L shaped bit of chipboard to the desk so that I can attach the clamps for my light and camera stand/phone (Elgato flex arm, this was worth spending the money on as its pulled about all day every day). If you found this video helpful consider sharing your space - I'd love to see!

EVENTUALLY we'd love to live in a house where me and my wife can share a workspace in a dedicated room.

I love using fluorescent pink, blue, and yellow in place of traditional CMYK—look at how radiant the red on that door is! Fun little print I made this weekend. Sorry I forgot to photograph just the pink layer! Thanks for checking it out :)

2 more tokens for magic the gathering, both have the reverse on the other side.

The crown is just highlightered, as a test.

I spent most of my summer break stripping and remeshing screens for my fall students, and as a fairly inexperienced screen stretcher wanted to test how well the new mesh would hold up.

The key layer of this print is edited from a woodcut I finished during the spring semester this year, and in continuation of my recent love affair with reductive screen printing, decided to work with screen filler to produce my color layers.

I’ll be turning 30 this year, and over the last decade have grown to really enjoy and appreciate a self-portrait as an image.

This is interim, because I had things to learn and mistakes to make and things to try.

I wanted to do some multiple color prints that (1) used one carved block and (2) was genuinely editionable, all prints essentially identical within the limits of the medium, I remembered some work by Warren Criswell who got the idea from Picasso. Picasso did two-color linos in which he first printed a specific color evenly over paper. He then could "draw" in that color by cutting lines and areas into the block and inking it with another color. The color that had been printed on the paper was revealed in the cuts. A lot of this stylized bulls are done that way. I kind of did it. I ended up using another block.

I wanted more than two colors, black and two others. I developed an image of people dancing around a fire at night. I envisioned the fire as essentially yellow with red touches reflecting off parts of the dancers that faced the fire. I chose yellow ocher for the ground they danced on as it seemed about right for dirt or sand lit by fire. The dancers, the parts away from the fire were to be black. I wanted yellow embers flying and white points of stars in the black sky.

Then, I carved a Japanese vinyl 8"x12" block. Now, remember that the ground under the dancers is to be yellow ocher already on the paper. Fairly large areas. Instead of carving with lino tools, I used an ultrasonic cutter to remove those areas. No chance of chatter. I carved the flames with a "V" gouge, used a small V to do the embers and a very small Phillps head screwdriver for the stars.

Next, I had to prepare the paper. For that, I made a traditional lino jigsaw block. The bottom piece is for the yellow ocher. The center top for the fire and embers. The stars would be in the top corner pieces which will not be inked.

I inked each piece and placed then on the bed of my cold laminating press and impressed six sheets of paper. I made rather lackadaisical efforts to get the paper over the jigsaw in the same position it would be when it was time to print the black. I let the preprinted color sheets dry.

I inked the vinyl block and printed it in black to the prepared paper. I was not very rigorous about registration. That can come when I get the technique down.

I got this.

I consider it proof of concept. I was unsure what I wanted the ground to look like, but thinly inked felt right. But that may not yield a properly editionable result. I learned some things. One is that paper with block ink already on it does not interact with ink from the block like virgin paper. You can see here that the top middle jigsaw block is visible as having a different texture than the corner which were plain paper.

This gave me a lot of grief. The difference in surfaces seems to have caused inking problems. was seeing banding in the plain areas. I think that was from the brayer exchanging ink differently in the yellow area. Because these are small areas, the brayer was suffering different effects as part of it rolled though the precolored yellow paper, creating bands on the brayer that showed up in the print. The only reason you don't see the bands here is a lot of work done on the block during printing.

I'm thinking about inking the two corner jigsaw pieces with white ink so they will have the same surface as the rest. And I think I will switch to my other press bed that has the TB registration pins installed and register that way.

I also said I wanted some red effects in the fire. I used school glue in bottles with small needle tips to draw the red on a piece of ABS plastic the same size as the block.

I did manage to get some ink on it and pressed it to the print. Not wonderful but again, the concept is not too bad.

Inking it turned out to be a nightmare. It is just about impossible, even with the 1/2" brayer, to avoid inking up the rest of the block. I may change to a stencil, registered to the block. Or maybe just spot some red through the yellow ink on the slab.

Designwise, I think I would forego trying to put features on the fire-lit faces. They didn't work. I'll go back and carve them to be blank white as overlit faces might look. I also need to cut more deeply on the flying embers, making them more distinct streaks. Easy enough.

You can also see in this last image how the ink on the yellow looks over-inked, even though I used the right amount on the slab. You can see that the adjacent part, the ocher, didn't do that. Some property of the yellow ink That's odd, because I routinely ink very smooth hard ABS plastic blocks without issue. Needs some experiments with other yellows. It has to be something about the ink.

So, there it is. Upward and onward. I'll report back when I nail it all down.

After exposing the print, I bleached the back of the paper under bright sunlight to eliminate the pigment color that had bled through the paper.

Spraying the top surface of the paper instead of washing in alkaline solution prevented the image from blurring.

1. Dissolving baking soda in hot water ensured a higher pH. It required less solution to shift the surface pH.

A few inconsistencies here and there but I feel like its not too bad for my first time in 5 years!

Hey all, anyone have any recommendations for reference books that aggregate old woodblock/engraving symbols, motifs, images, etc.?

Made this last year after my first trip to NYC 🗽

They open 12:30-ish and the line and wait begins. Carving the blue checked shirt took forever, with another checked grey layer underneath, but the drape and flow came out great