And mightymouse pronounced . . . . You Must Create!

It was a friends birthday last week, and nothing in my stockpile of currently finished work seemed quite right.  So I finished off this baby thats been sitting in my half formed to-do stack :

Its one of four I started way back in Melbourne last year, as a carry on from my first colour blocked Sugar Skulls - Which I then got a little sidetracked from when my print class at APW hit.  The aim was to do a more detailed set, but it meant more time involved in the finishing layers. They somehow never got completed.

Well this one gave me the kick I needed to finish off the others :

I love the bright blocks of colour.  Glad I’ve finally got around to getting them done!

Read Full Post »

This is the last instalment in my relief series – The third and final print I made during the four week evening class I took at Australian Print Workshop over in Fitzroy. Again, its a two colour print like my last. But this time using a woodblock as the relief medium, each colour printed from a separately carved plate.

This process involved cutting the key plate first – Even though it ends up being printed last. The key plate is then inked up and printed, the resulting image then transferred back onto the secondary plate to use as a guide.

When I started thinking about the image I wanted to cut, I knew the key plate would print up black, but our teacher Simon was choosing a ‘mystery’ colour for the second plate.  This miffed me a bit, because it meant coming up with an image that much harder… A basic two colour design that would look ok no matter which colour was picked.  In the end I went with an Anime scene I’ve been meaning to paint up for the last 6 years or so. The aim was to keep it mainly black and white, with the secondary colour to fill the background only. Hence the way I cut out my key plate.

Anyways I somehow lucked out. The secondary colour to be chosen a beige flesh tone. As I hadn’t yet cut my second plate, I reassessed my image and carved out different areas than the original plan. And so the background is now left in white.

I suppose this way I have the opportunity to carve a third block to colour in this area should I choose to print these blocks up again. And I can alway hand finish the prints I’ve already made if it keeps bothering me, which it may well do… See I went and used that grainy first transfer off my key plate as a guide and worked it up in gouache. Now the two-colour prints have an unfinished feel if compared side by side.

And so. After cutting these blocks, I can say I personally think that laminate wood is absolute shit for carving into.  Sure its a softer wood for easy cutting – But the top layer of veneer tends to lift off on its own in the finer ares, so my image was left with less detail than I would have liked. Not cool. Def. gonna stick w vinyl next time!

Read Full Post »