And so it begins...

Drawing old style

For transferring the sketch onto the woodblocks, I use an old fashioned grid and pencil followed by charcoal stick. Once I'm satisfied with the sketch and I more or less know where the cut lines for each puzzle piece will be, I strengthen the lines with either magic marker or sumi ink. All depends whether I feel like drawing with a brush or a marker.

Getting quite good at snapping pics with left hand
while posing right hand :-)

Two blocks more or less sketched out

The ink will stay through the process of sanding smooth, tinting the block and cutting the pieces. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First thing is to get the drawing on the blocks with pencil and charcoal. The pictures on the computer help to correct errors and generally get a "bird's eye view" of the large blocks. I also stand on a stepping stool to get the big picture from time to time.

I work with two adjacent blocks at a time, then retire those and add two blank ones, always having four blocks on the work bench at once.

There she flows! I can see that dove-tail needs some work,
maybe I'll move it up a bit

Advantage of the charcoal stick is that I can wipe off with a brush of the hand, making drawing very loose and free and making my hand very black. I may finish another two tonight and the rest tomorrow. I might even make a silly video.
Each block has to have 20 potential puzzle pieces, some with room to grow in case I miscounted our participating artists. Shapes are going to be funny this year, I don't want anyone complaining!

During a break I went to my favorite place in the whole shopping world: the home improvement store! There I picked up a couple of foam supports for the puzzle piece cutting phase and a fresh new batch of scroll blades for my saber-saw. Cannot wait to get those little pieces cut out!

Ready for next phase already!

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