The Massive Project comes to the home stretch

In my excitement, I forgot to mention my massive project!
All the details are in my other blog, http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com

This image is one of 112 received for the City of the World project, contributed by Frank Trueba from Felton California.

Two commissions and a massive project

My time these days is taken up sunrise to sunset. I am finished with one commission and getting close to finishing another. These come rarely and only when I'm busy and all at the same time. I had to turn down two others this year because even I know my limit.

Here's a peek at one of the  illustrations for a publisher of Kipling books:

I thought it turned out kind of cool. It's tough for me to make something "look like a woodcut" without actually cutting it but the scope of the commission just didn't allow for that kind of time investment. So I started the way I usually start, with a real subject, in this case a pine cone.

After a photo session with my pine cone, I imported into Photoshop and applied some filters until I was satisfied with a very lightly rendered image. Then I just traced it with a brush as if I was cutting it with my chisels. A bit time consuming, but the result is very woodcut like, perhaps more like a wood engraving and it has my "hand" style deeply embedded in it. Or so I think, anyway, it actually looks like I drew it and carved it.

Spring is here and I'm getting a bad case of spring fever. But more work is to be done.

OFF MY PLATE!!! New Year, New Resolution

Last year I started out the year calling it a simpler year...or was that the year before that?! Hmmmm...see!? I'm already in trouble.
I am declaring this 2012 the OFF-MY-PLATE year. I'm deep into a bad case of project indigestion. I have one print to finish for an exchange and a commission for a block/print set.
And that's it, that IS IT!!!
Oh yeah, the puzzle project yet to be finished and printed...sigh... http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com


My to-do list is ridiculous with projects so old that I had to shut off the reminders in my Outlook so that I wouldn't see the annoying: "eight months overdue" notices.
My website in dire need of revising, my books in need of revising...hey, just those two things could take me the rest of the year.

Goldwell: Red Barn from the East

But no, no no nononono!!! I have little notebooks and pieces of paper hanging all over my very disorganized studio (in need of revision as well) that will keep me busy until I'm old and gray...make that older and grayer.
Blocks like the Goldwell series (above) yell at me every morning to get my act together or they're walking off. My piles of wood are dusty and sad.

So that's it, I'm done with the new and on with the old. Or something like that.
2012, Chinese Lunar New Year of the Black Dragon's Den, which is where I'm going to mercilessly toss anyone that tries to recruit me for any project that isn't my own. And that includes me.

2012, get off OFF MY PLATE!!! year.

You heard it here first.

Baby Grand is done!

Wow I've never worked so hard on such a small print!
I experimented with waterbased inks, transparent bases, layering and just in general had a GRAND time making something so big, so small.

Here are all nine blocks of the Baby Grand printed, each adds a little something until the final result looks almost like a tiny painting:

1. Key block

2. Underpainting of blue

3. Forest green

4. Underpainting of tanish

5. Violet

6. Umber/sienna

7. Deep purple

8. Umber

9. Reduce and reprint key on foreground

Ta-daaaa!

Baby Grand, color woodcut

2.5 x 3.5 inches

October Update, where have I been?

I've been in the studio, of course!
Working on the "Baby Grand", a tiny print with a larger than life subject for (what else!) the barenforum.org (http://barenforum.org) 50th Anniversary Exchange. I thought everyone in the world should have the Grand Canyon in their pocket.

I'm busy working on block number 4 of 9 blocks but they go quickly. The print is 2.5 by 3.5 inches (ACEO size) and it is delightful to work on. All the blocks are carved, now I'm just printing like a mad woman, an edition of 160.

The Grand Canyon is all about color so I'm going to make this tiny print huge in palette. Well, it's all about size too and thus my tiny representation. I was going to call it Pocket Canyon but I think Baby Grand is better. What do you think?

Here are the first three blocks:

Right to left: The key block, blue background, green foreground trees.

And here is the fruit of my labor so far...all those tiny prints! I built a registration board just for these little cherry blocks and also a small printing "baren" made of wood buttons and a doorknob. Works like a charm!

All these tiny prints will be trimmed even smaller when finished. I had to leave a margin to register properly.

All the blocks required for this print. The first three (the dirty ones!) have been printed. I built the registration board from foamboard to accommodate the cherry blocks. The tiny doorknob with glued on wood buttons makes quick work of printing by hand.