Umbrella girls

Remember this post? well, I finished the Japanese woodblock class yesterday. Kind of sad, I liked having that on Saturday mornings, it made me feel like I'd already accomplished a lot by 1:00, and i still have sooo much to learn! We put up the final work to discuss and it turned out really amazing, everyone in the class was so talented, and we all produced such different styles and content. The umbrella girl with blue background was my final woodblock print, the grey is one I'm playing with on photoshop. i still want to carve out some raindrops and puddles in the blue, as shown in the grey one, so it's a work in progress.



5 color, 4 blocks





My panda, 2 girls, and final umbrella girl; other students works.


I love this gorgeous cat print!!


These works were by a student, Greg, who i think took to woodblock printing quicker than anyone. His final print was actually (8!!) carved blocks, the surfer on the left. I love the subtle colors of his fish print, too.


Orange and red mollusks


Candy colored herd of zebras

You can stand under my...

I'm working on my final project for woodblock class right now, a five block, five color print and I've been doing some sketches in sharpies to help visually separate which colors will go on which block. I decided on the umbrella girl because I'm dying to try out some techniques for the rain and use bokashi, or gradation, and get to play with the fun Marimekko-like print... not to mention the weather we've been having. Check out these great umbrella themed woodblock prints too!

Wellies!

Harunobu's "Praying for Rain" print

A Rainy Twilight by Bertha Lum, 1905 print via hanga.com



Bertha Lum "Geisha Girls" print via hanga.com

"Amabare" by Katsuyuki Nishijima print via japanese-closet.com

Saturday Woodblock class

Saturdays I have woodblock class and a few students were nice enough to let me take pics of the process. If you want to learn more about the tools and process this book by Rebecca Salter is really great. There are very few woodblock printers actually left, because other printmaking process are easier and less time consuming, but David Bull is a still a prominent printer who has great info on his site, including a web cam where you can watch him at work.

Carving the block with the knife

For the printing process, first you wet the block, then dab on Nori, a paste to set the pigment, and the chosen color pigment on the block and then pounce it in with a marubake brush

The paper is laid flat on top of the pigmented block...

and a baren is used to rub the paper....

peel off the paper and voila! here's the print.

You need lots of cups with water, hake brushes, and Starbucks of course.

My tools from Baren Mall came!! Love the packaging!

This is Woody, my new baren: you use him to do the actual print by rubbing it against the paper. This was a very inexpensive plastic model because the amazing bamboo covered ones can be several hundred dollars.


My teachers tools. Its crazy the difference amazing quality and sharpening skills make.....he let me use them and the wood just peeled off like butter!

My new freshly carved panda block

with watercolor and nori brushed in...

1st try with block....


yay!!!! i love this little guy! I'm still having issues but i love how it picked up the wood grain and he's such a cute happy panda. I'm taking it as a success....Next class we have to make a "kaleidoscope" print and print multiple times to 1 page so they become layered with different colors.

Woodblock Class

I love Japanese woodblock, or Moku Hanga, and ukiyo-e prints, and have tons of books on the history of ukiyo-e. I'm always drawn to the imagery and detail, from the patterns in each kimono to the soft background gradation's of light and water. So when I saw a class offered on Saturdays for Japanese Woodblock printing at SVA I signed up right away. How's it going? Am I printing delicate, smoky multi-color prints of gorgeous cherry blossoms? Not exactly. It turns out the carving and printing is reallllly hard!! In the first project, a single color print, my woodblock chipped a lot, due to my poor carving skills (we had to learn how to sharpen the knives to carve well and I still don't have that down) and choice of image. Next time I'm doing a much larger flat plane and few thin lines. We printed editions of 10 (which is why you see the same 2 girls all over the website!!) and I've been playing with layering them by drawing on top of the print. It's really great learning all the actual tools to use and learning the traditional way, though, so I can't wait to start the next project and get it right this time.

My woodblock...um, it's much too deep and looks better here than the actual prints!

2 of my editions, i started only doing the girl on the left because too much ink picked up when printing the entire block