Advancing on Two Fronts, Must Be Spring!

Energy! Two Studio Tricks

I love it when I'm full of energy...mostly because some (other) times I have to "make" myself work, ups and downs, you know...

Anyhow, I am fully enjoying a flurry of self-inflicted activity, and making progress on a long project and a short-ish project.

The Long: Ghost Town

About a week ago I finished carving not only the 20 small woodcuts for the Ghost Town project but also a medium size View block. The 20 4x6 inch blocks are ready to print and so I started mulling how to make a big project not so big. Turns out, a sheet of 22x30 inch paper will print 9 at a time with generous margins.

I have printed multiple blocks before, all this trick necessitates is a "jig" that holds the blocks in place while a large sheet of paper is placed on a few blocks simultaneously. The "lock" (in letterpress called a chase) has to be slightly lower than the blocks so that I can ink away without removing the blocks each print. I construct these from foam-board, mat-board and/or gator-board, whatever thickness combination gives me the ideal height to hold the blocks in place just above the jig surface.

Here are pictures, better than descriptions!

First laying out the blocks and finding the spacing

Some calculations on the sizes of spacers needed
(I'm good at math!)

Spacers cut on left, glue and square ready

I place the blocks as I go to make sure they fit

Each block held at the right height by gator-board

Presto! The completed chase, blocks in place
Ink and paper required, After the blocks are printed
I can trim the paper to size

The Short: Wings Exchange, the Flying Maple Seeds

Also made the final adjustments on the Seeds are Sown, Life is Grown print for the Barenforum.org 72nd print exchange. I will detail the complete process in next post, but here are the photos and the video:

First vs second proofs

block and print

Last few details and cleaning up
require my magnifying lamp

Detail of my tiniest tool doing some
delicate carving

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