Wednesday, February 10, 2010

New print: 3 seeds

3 seeds
Wood Engraving 2010
11"x7.5"
Here is my latest, "3 seeds" for the SSNW exchange. A long time ago I did 2 seeds for a Baren exchange and always wanted to revisit the series. I have 4 seeds all ready to print.
These are engraved on boxwood rounds, straight from Matsumura San in Japan. I don't think he quite understood that his "discards" are a treasure trove for someone like me who gets inspired by the shape and rings of every piece of wood.

I print these on my bottlejack press, plans courtesy of Charles Morgan. I made my press with a 5-ton mini jack, so it's quite portable and the footprint and height a bit smaller than Charles's press. Works great for engravings, although engravings are always ticklish to print. Too much ink and detail goes away, too little and coverage is not even. It is especially difficult to engrave three different blocks at once. I cut out a piece of foamboard and fit the blocks snugly into the cutouts; this keeps them together and steady for printing.

The paper is pre-printed acid-free bought at Office Depot. They have a wide variety of papers that are acid-free, smooth and perfect for engravings.
Details



Also, having a blast raising money for Haiti in my ebay store. So far I've raised near $300 by donating a percentage of sales to the Clinton/Bush Haiti Fund, which happens automatically when I sell something. My goal is to donate $1000 by spring. I thought of sending money but doing it with art is more rewarding.

1 comment:

  1. Wonderful prints, and a big congratulations on your Ebay store sales raising money for Haiti.

    ReplyDelete