Madness revisited

Sometimes you just have to take a step back and kick yourself. A little while back I experimented with adding a blog for Studio Notes only. I figured I would keep these Updates and the Method of printmaking separate...I don't know why anymore. Sounded good at the time.

In any case, I can't keep up with myself! Add to that the fact that nearly everything I update my faithful followers necessarily has to do with art and printmaking and--well, let's just say compartmentalizing was a bad idea. So the experiment is over and I now am back to just having two blogs, this one and the puzzle prints dedicated blog. I think that is still a good idea. Time will tell.

The upshot is that my method posts are now here again in my beloved long running 1000 Woodcuts blog, the one, the only, the almost only. I will try to keep up the categories so everything is easy to find.

Sigh. Carry on...

Finally! Fantastic Garden is launched

Sheesh! Whew! Tons of work but well worth it, the Fantastic Garden Puzzle Print Project has been officially launched. After weeks of tweaking I just looooved pushing the bright green Launch Button.

Anyhow, we will now detour news of the project to:

The Official Project Headquarters
http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com

The Information and Sign Up Page on Kickstarter.com
http://tinyurl.com/fantasticgarden

Join us! And thank you for your support!

Making a PuzzlePrint: a very short slide show

Spring and Puzzle Prints are in the Air...

Ah yes, my printmaking friends and I are in the process of making our next puzzle print. A big one...a monumental one!


Briefly, a Monumental Puzzle Print is a large design composed of "puzzle pieces", each of which is designed and carved by a unique artist under a common theme. The project director designs and cuts the wood  block into puzzle-like pieces, then sends the pieces to participant artists; they carve their own little design and send the tiny piece back. Then the director assembles the carved pieces. The entire design is printed as a woodcut print after the puzzle is reassembled and finally each participant receives a huge print encompassing the entire design.
Here is a short slide show of the steps in making a puzzle print:

How to make a puzzle print in many easy (not easy) steps

For much more on the process, and to follow the making of the next one, the official Puzzle Print Headquarters:  

http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com

Doodles to prints

I am fully engaged now in the creation of the next collaborative puzzle print, which as some of you know, I am launching as a Kickstarter.com project so that we get funded properly this time.
Once I launch I will update that project on my alter-blog http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com
but we're not there yet although so close I'm starting to shake a little.

While awaiting for the final approval process and the final touches on my part, I continued to work on the image which will be the awesome Fantastic Garden with the help of 80 printmaking friends. My creative assignment is to come up with something simple, puzzle-like, to be divided into as many pieces as there will be participants for them to give the image life.

The design has to be simple so I started by looking at my collection of royalty-free clip art and came up with some doodles. I felt like I had stepped into a toon-world of some sort with images of fat-funny bees and rounded flowers floating in my head.

But I couldn't stop there! No, once fully engaged I had to keep doodling. For that, I use Photoshop and my Bamboo tablet with a very responsive pen! I took the birds and flipped them, scaled the tree, added more pond, and some critters under the tree roots. I don't know about anyone else, but those "doodles" take a bit of your life away. I think artists live so long because we turn half an hour into seven, or more accurately, we shrink seven hours of doodling into what seems like 30 minutes, thus "living" 6 and a half free hours during which we don't age at all. It's a theory, no?!

Anyhow, one thing led to another and I came up with the final image, to be modified several more times of course. Here it is, the soon to be Fantastic Garden. Imagine it larger than life 60 x 44 inches in four panels! And all those empty spaces will be filled with my fellow artists' contributions! How awesome is this going to be?!

But of course I couldn't stop there! Not now with all the creative juices flowing like mad...so I thought wouldn't it be super-cool to make some woodcuts from the design with more detail and stuff?! Why not, I have to wait for the participants to cut their blocks anyway, might as well be making art.

So I took the next step and kept on drawing and coloring. I have to say that I don't usually work this way at all but this is a lot of fun. My usual modus operandis is to draw right on the block and take it from there. But this time I'm planning everything ahead.

So here we are after two days of working, the evolution of a little panel which is likely to become one of the rewards for the future backers of the project!

The creative process is kind of cool, I think, things just happen and we artists seem to step out of our mind and body while "something" takes over and doodles away.
This one is called "Tree and a Bee". Should make a cool woodcut.

I better keep working!

More puzzle pages updated!

I am slowly but surely updating more projects, both previous puzzle prints are now all dressed up in new web dresses. Here is the main projects page, the first five links are now live:
http://1000woodcuts.com/projects/index.html

On a related note, the next monumental puzzle print is just around the corner, finalizing some details in Kickstarter. The Kickstarter.com platform is designed for funding creative projects and it should be perfect to make sure that we have enough money to complete the project without going broke. I personally am very excited about that.

Participation will be limited to the first 80 to sign up, this way the beast print remains manageable and I don't lose my sanity....er, allegedly.
Projected sign up will open in two weeks and will remain open for thirty days. Soon, now, very soon!