Summer Joy

 

Summer Joy
10” x 8”
Reduction Relief Print
Limited Edition of Seven

In August, we went on a mini-garden tour. It was wonderful and inspiring. One of the gardens was part of a farm, that in addition to a greenhouse jam packed with an obscene bounty of vegetables, there were rows and rows of flowers grown from which the farmer makes natural fabric dyes (check out farmandfolk.com).

When I saw the row of Rudbeckia (which I learned yields a lovely pale gold dye), I knew the blossoms would be a fine subject for the reduction process. But it took me a few months to come back to this image. 

First, I did a rough drawing and then a second drawing using colored markers to think through each color. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of the reduction technique, though this time, I forgot to reverse the image when I transferred it to the plate. However, I think I like the final print better with the image reversed. 

We’ve had an extremely dry and warm winter. It was starting to feel like early spring—but without any green. I think that's what drew me to the subject. 

Ironically, as I carved the plate for the final color pass of black ink, the weather changed and winter finally arrived, bringing us a good eight inches of snow. And there was more on the way…last night gave us another eight inches. Let the shoveling begin!

Summer Still Life & A New Obsession

 

Summer Still Life
8” x 10”
Limited Edition Relief Print

I tried my hand at another reduction print, inspired by a photo I took last summer: the veggies dramatically bathed in bright sunlight, casting deep shadows across the surface. 

The reduction process, as I've mentioned before, is a bit scary. And for me, highly unpredictable. Determining what to cut and what to leave is still very challenging. While the process results in a limited number of prints, that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's only so much room in the studio after all. 

This piece was a welcome relief from my latest obsession, weaving. In early November I purchased a table loom and have been learning how to weave. My technique is rather crude at this point, and I’ll need hours decades of practice to improve. 

My first piece was experimenting with basic weaving (“plain weave”) and then creating simple shapes and patterns. I tore out the yarn many times and reworked many areas and at one point, accidentally cut my warp (the framework you weave the yarn, or “weft” through) and had to totally start over. However, I was not discouraged and kept at it. For any weavers out there, please excuse my amateur results. I hope to continue to improve.

Next, I jumped right to something complicated (yeah, no baby steps here) when I decided to try to create a landscape. Again, I “unwove” and rewove most of the piece several times to repair mistakes and after several weeks, finally finished it. I’m not crazy about it as it lost something through several reworkings. Plus, the craftsmanship is still very rough, but I learned a LOT and have seen incremental improvement.
 

High Country, Fall
16.5” x 12”

I was midway through completing the landscape piece for the second time (when I decided I needed a break) and created Summer Still Life.

Currently I’m experimenting with a smaller piece to learn “wedge weaving” …stay tuned for notes on how that turns out.

Reduction Printing: Madness?

Yellows & Greens

8” x 10”
Hand-rubbed Relief Print
Limited Edition

I was inspired by a summer day’s harvest of yellow squash and tomatillos. It seemed like a good subject to try using the reduction process to create the image. With the reduction process, you continually cut away portions of the plate, which results in the plate having only the material left that prints the color, which in this case, was a grey-black.

With relief printing, there are many steps. It’s kind of scary, really, as you have to get to the end of the steps to determine whether the result is successful or not. I'm still learning the reduction process and my efforts are still a bit crude.

First I start with a drawing.

 

Then, I trace the drawing. When the image is transferred to the plate, the tracing is flipped so the image is backward.

I then strengthen the image on the plate. In the image below, I have cut away the areas I want to be white.

Here, I have printed a lighter and a darker yellow, plus a light green. With each pass, I cut away the part of the plate that printed the colors I want to keep. You are overprinting lighter areas with the next darker color. 

It is really easy to accidentally cut away more than you planned to remove, which adds a level of challenge and excitement to the process. It's also difficult to capture the nuance of shape that you can with a drawing. Cutting shapes is tricky. 

Even though I have a system to help register each printing pass, another issue is miss-aligning the paper to the plate when you transfer each color.

Below, I have printed a slightly darker green and a blue. 

In the final image, you can see I printed the golden brown and then the gray-black.

 Viola! I started with 14 sheets and ended up with 10 final prints. It's not just art, it's an adventure!

Viola!

Birds!

 

Bluebird
3” x 4”
Reduction Relief Print

I did several drawings of birds, with the idea that I would create more cards to sell at my show in October. When I set to making the drawings into relief prints, I didn’t fully think it through, as the time it took to create two of the pieces couldn’t realistically be offset by the price per card. Hmmm – live and learn, I guess. Despite that, I was happy with the results and as always, learned something in the process. 

 

On "Bluebird", I used the reduction process. With this method, you destroy all but your last color plate in the process. While it saves on linoleum plates, it’s less forgiving than using separate plates for each color. This was a limited edition of only 10 final cards.

Western Flycatcher
3” x 4”
Relief Print

 

Next, I created “Western Flycatcher”. For this piece, I carved separate plates for each color, so I can reprint this image again if I wish. I decided to get fancy and mounted the prints on black paper. Then, I tied white paper to the inside with embroidery thread. A delightful result, but impractical in terms of the time spent assembling each card.

 

Hey, Crow!
4” x 3”
Relief Print

 

“Hey, Crow!”, it was a last-minute project. I decided on creating a one-color image that would be more time-efficient. I love this guy! Though I had to carve the image twice before I was happy with the result.

 

Stay tuned for more birds down the road.

Heart Beets

 

Heart Beets

8” x 10”

Reduction Linoleum Block Print

Beautiful beets from the garden! They were very small this year, and I harvested and ate more beet greens than beet roots.

 

This piece was my first effort at the reduction printing process. As I embark on this new technique, I am terrified. It takes careful planning and carving! 

 

How it Works
First, I cut away the areas I want to be white and then print a light base color, which in this case, was a pale yellow. Next, I cut away the portions I want to leave as the base color. This is repeated with each subsequent color. There were six color passes in the final image. The scary part is how easily you can accidentally cut away a chunk that was supposed to be a color you have not yet printed. I speak from experience. Fortunately, I was able to touch it up.

 

Ultimately, with this process you destroy all but your last color plate by the time you finish (in this case, black). So, it results in a limited run of prints. I started with 14 sheets and ended up with 10 prints of this image.

 

Not bad for a first try.