Unbelievable!

We grew!

While I was sleeping, we grew to an astounding 142 artists! So, as promised, I stretched the sketch to four panels wide by two high, landscape orientation. Measurements now are a monumental 120 inches wide or 10 feet or 3 meters, by 44 inches high or 112 cm.

Here is the latest rendition with changes:
- the branch somehow grew too! it now stretches both sides of the puzzle, giving it a nice warm nature frame
- the dove scooted left to balance the composition and it is simpler now, line-wise
- the sun scooted right to give each panel (light gray lines) a nicer composition by itself. sometimes people just want to look at one panel at a time
- the earth-people didn't change much but they got cozier and the river now flows from them better
- many energy lines from the sun are changed to bind the whole thing together

Peace Puzzle background image

Are we feeling peaceful yet? I'm liking it more and all the elements are flowing together beautifully. The design will change again during the transfer to the blocks and yet again after cutting because my carving knives always get carried away.
Remember that each participant, all 142 or more, gets about a leaf-sized block; I can't wait to see all those tiny designs fill the empty spaces.

The Kickstarter campaign

Almost over! 7 days left and counting, awesome response!

The Peace Puzzle: Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

How to sign up:

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

Click on Back this Project green button

Choose a reward and check out

The Peace Puzzle is live!

Want to play puzzle with us?

Your task as an artist will be to:
1. Sign up and spread the word to get more people to sign up
2. After the project is funded, you will receive a request for your address from me. Answer promptly!
3. Soon after that you will receive a block of wood, blank on one side
4. Design something that means PEACE to you and carve it as a relief block
5. Mail it back to me with some information I will request

That's it! Then you wait patiently for your huge print and book to arrive.

How to Sign Up

NOW Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle
READ everything, watch the video if you are into silly, but please understand the project!
Feel free to ask me questions any time (...anytime I'm awake, that is) 1000woodcuts@gmail.com
Choose an ARTIST level of participation on the right of the page where it says REWARDS and click on the reward you want. Follow instructions to check out.

Artist Levels explained here and in the project

Here are the artist levels you will find in the Kickstarter project. In order to participate you have to sign up (pledge) for one of these levels! If you are feeling overly generous, remember you can always pledge more (for example: click on the Single Participant level, but pledge $100).

ARTIST - SINGLE PARTICIPANT LTD-120
You get to play! You agree to design and carve a tiny wood block under the theme PEACE, and send it back to me. After the printing you will receive the SIX-PANEL+ print The Peace Puzzle (each panel 22 x 30 inches or 56 x 75 cm). You also get the book Peace in Print with your individual image and blurb to share with the world.

ARTIST - TWO PARTICIPANT RATE LTD-20
You get to play with a friend and save! Two artists-one address. You both agree to design and carve a tiny wood block under the theme PEACE, and send it back to me. After the printing you will each receive the SIX-PANEL+ print The Peace Puzzle (each panel 22 x 30 inches or 56 x 75 cm). You also get the book Peace in Print with your individual image and blurb to share with the world.
HINT: Great value if two artists want to join resources under the same address!

ARTIST - GROUP OF 4 PARTICIPANTS SPECIAL  LTD-10
You get to play with your friends and save a lot! FOUR artists-one address. You all agree to design and carve a tiny wood block under the theme PEACE, and send it back to me. After the printing you each will receive the SIX-PANEL+ print The Peace Puzzle (each panel 22 x 30 inches or 56 x 75 cm). You also each get the book Peace in Print with your individual image and blurb to share with the world.
HINT: Great value if a group of artists want to join resources under the same address!


Don't forget to tell everyone you know and shout it loud on the streets to people you don't know!
Use the tag #peacepuzzle

Peace




1000woodcuts Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/1000woodcuts
Maria's Facebook Profile: https://www.facebook.com/maria.arango.diener
Maria's Twitter Profile: https://twitter.com/1000woodcuts
1000woodcuts YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/1000woodcuts/videos

The Puzzling Itch

Puzzle? Anyone?

Right about this time every two years or so I get an itch to lure my fellow artists into a massive collaboration effort. We call these projects, quite appropriately, Monumental Collaborative Puzzle Prints.
This will be the fifth such project and hopefully, the biggest to date. Right now the whole thing is just coming together as a Kickstarter.com project, but in the meantime, maybe I can whet everyone's appetite with a speedy video on what exactly is a puzzle print. Oh and some visual samples below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glpXWU3-vOw

Previous MCPPs

The City of the World 2012, 112 artists

The Great Cairn 2010, 82 artists

New Batch of Garden Denizens

All Gardens Share Critters

Through this project I have been amazed at the similarities between gardens here and there. Sure, a desert garden is much different than a rain forest garden or a European or Australian garden, but it never ceases to amaze me that the same critters and plants reappear regardless of locale.

The mantis abounds here in the desert as well and thrives among fruit trees like our hardy Pomegranate, where it finds those pesky bugs that open the ripe fruit and ruin it just before I was going to pick.
The lotus (don't miss the artist's inspiring comments on this one!) seemed to belong among our own hard working Century Plant, which is said to bloom once in its lifetime and immediately after begin a journey to plant heaven.
The toadstool belonged sheltered under the folds of a rather large seashell (about 2 feet wide!) that we inherited along with the house.

Bee Shay - Nantucket, Massachusetts USA 

Sarah Wojciechowski - North Royalton, Ohio USA
For my puzzle piece I decided to portray a lotus blossom. The lotus flower represents fortune, purity, and hard work. It grows in muddy water, and it is this environment that gives forth the flower’s first and most literal meaning: rising and blooming above the murk.The second meaning, which is related to the first is purification. It resembles the purifying of the spirit which is born into murkiness. The third meaning refers to faithfulness. Those who are working to rise above the muddy waters.

Sarah Cvilicek - Reno, Nevada USA
When I think of a fantastic garden I think of all of the possibilities and who is living there! A whole world is there and magic happens. So for me I see little houses for fairies and gnomes! It is my hope that a gnome takes up residence in my toadstool house! 
Happy Magic in this amazing garden!

Fantastic Garden Headquarters: http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com

More Garden Denizens

Pandora's Box!

I had the brilliant idea of taking the first few pictures of blocks in my "real" garden. Great. Now I have become obsessed to have a different background for every new arrival. Sigh.  From now on, I am accepting the self-imposed assignment: everyone gets their own unique background. What the heck, I have an acre full of a variety of desert flora! Should make the Growing the Garden book a delight to peruse.

This little fellow was stalking me while I swam!
He/she then waited for me to finish, get my camera and snap a few

The Puzzle Pieces

Therese Krupp - Minneapolis USA
nimblefingers58 at yahoo.com

My name is Basil...I am an extraordinary cat. I love to prowl in the deep vegetation looking at all the bugs. I do not like snakes. When I see them I climb a tree and lift my whiskers through the leaves ..I have great fun in the clouds. When I'm tired I slowly ooze down the bark till I reach the grass . Spring is my favorite time. Meow!   sincerely  Basil.

My name is Basil...I am an extraordinary cat. I love to prowl in the deep vegetation looking at all the bugs. I do not like snakes. When I see them I climb a tree and lift my whiskers through the leaves ..I have great fun in the clouds. When I'm tired I slowly ooze down the bark till I reach the grass . Spring is my favorite time. Meow!   sincerely  Basil. 

Suzanne J. Salsbury - Waterloo, Iowa USA
salsbury at forbin.net

My Garden caters to all kinds of birds, insects, and butterflies during the year so I had lots of options to choose from.  After running through a myriad of insects, birds, bugs, and fairie images I finally settled on a butterfly. Woodcuts are definitely not my strongest area of printmaking so as I looked for imagery I looked at very basic shapes.  After I decided on a butterfly I began to search for a very simple image that would have a little more appeal than just a flat black shape.  WOW!  There are a lot of simple designs out there.  I compiled a colection of possibie images and waited for my puzzle piece to arrive. After my puzzle piece arrived and I realized how large my image could be, I really became bold.  This is the most detailed woodcut I have done to date and I think it turned out pretty good.  Who knows, if I continue to join in these collaborations and other exchanges, in 50 years I may be able to call myself a woodcut printmaker.

My Garden caters to all kinds of birds, insects, and butterflies during the year so I had lots of options to choose from.  After running through a myriad of insects, birds, bugs, and fairie images I finally settled on a butterfly.

Woodcuts are definitely not my strongest area of printmaking so as I looked for imagery I looked at very basic shapes.  After I decided on a butterfly I began to search for a very simple image that would have a little more appeal than just a flat black shape.  WOW!  There are a lot of simple designs out there.  I compiled a colection of possibie images and waited for my puzzle piece to arrive.

After my puzzle piece arrived and I realized how large my image could be, I really became bold.  This is the most detailed woodcut I have done to date and I think it turned out pretty good.  Who knows, if I continue to join in these collaborations and other exchanges, in 50 years I may be able to call myself a woodcut printmaker.

Robert Simola - Central Coast of California
http://robertsimola.com

Fantastic Garden Headquarters: http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com

Transferring key block to color blocks

As promised, I made a little video on easy transferring of key block to color blocks.
Determining the number of color blocks is the hard part, I tend to just think through it and usually end up with more blocks than I need. I guess that's better than being short a block.

Everything needed to transfer key block, foamboard registration jig,
transparent sheet, blank blocks, ink, printing instrument

For loose designs such as the Fantastic Garden doodle rewards, the color blocks are easy to transfer and carve. If I want more precision, I usually use a variation of the traditional Japanese method: transfer key block to tracing paper, glue tracing paper onto color blocks with registration marks included.

But for Western relief color prints and a simple design, I save my precious hanshita (backed tracing) paper and transfer the design right from one block to another. For this, I use a registration board made with foamboard that fits the height of the block perfectly. This allows me to place the corner of the printing block against the registration board, place the paper against the registration guides and print away.

Nice transfers onto several color blocks and some proofs

I will use the registration board for the actual print and in order to adapt it to transfer the key block to the color blocks, I simply add a sheet of any non-stretchable, see-through, and non-absorbent material. This can be Mylar, any transparent plastic sheet such as overhead transparency, glassine (although I like to see completely through), or any similar material.

The sheet needs to be slightly larger than the block but not so large that it becomes unwieldy to handle. I tack the edge of the sheet onto the foamboard registration board and flip aside to allow me to ink the block. Here is the procedure:

1. Pin or tape the transparent transfer sheet to the registration board and flip aside
2. Ink the block
3. Register the corner of the block on the registration board
4. Flip the sheet onto the block
5. Print the transparent sheet as any other sheet, with hand or press pressure
6. Flip the sheet aside and remove key block
7. Place blank block in the registration board
8. Flip sheet onto the blank block
9. Print the sheet onto the block using hand or press pressure
10. Repeat for each color block needed

The whole procedure in video, enjoy!

Fantastic Garden Headquarters: http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com

Enlarging the Fantastic Garden sketch

As usual, I'm ahead on the project and behind on reporting!

Fantastic Garden reference sketch at 1/4 scale

The large woodblocks for our Fantastic Garden will be here this week; I'm so excited about that!
Since we got enough participants so fast, this means I can get ahead of the game a little bit and start transferring the drawing to the larger blocks. "Transferring" is a misnomer in this case because I actually re-draw the sketch on the blocks. Why? you ask? Well, the sketch is all good and charming but when creating the actual drawing I have to make sure that the "puzzle pieces" that each participant will receive is a block that can be designed and carved. This means no skinny blocks, no tiny blocks, in general, no "difficult" blocks.
So I adjust the design as I go along to make sure that:
1. I can actually jig-saw into doable pieces and,
2. All the pieces are roughly 5-6 inches in diameter and of a shape that is welcoming to unique designs for my friends

I made a slide show/video about how to make your own enlargements from a standard printer. Basically, I start out by going to my favorite imaging program, Adobe Photoshop, and dividing the sketch into printable chunks. My image was 22 x 30 inches so I divided into 8 sheets, each printable on my standard printer at 8.5 x 11 inches. Just select an area print size, and then use the "print selection" command to print just that area. Overlapping the image is necessary because later I will glue together and need to know how to align it. Repeat 8 times!

Here is a slide show and video of the rest of the process:

On another front, I have now finished carving the About the Pond doodle key block and tomorrow will make a slide show of the progress, transfer the key to the color blocks and make a little video of that process.

Onward and upward!

Fantastic Garden Headquarters: http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com

Working on the Doodles

First, the Stretch Goal

Thank you backers and participant-backers alike! Since we met the initial goal so quickly, let's shoot for the moon! New stretch goal set at $5900. What is a stretch goal? Well, a goal above the goal, a new horizon, raising the bar, most importantly a way to give extra rewards to everyone involved for spreading the word. The project is funded regardless of making the stretch goal BUT!

Let's keep sharing the art-venture and every pledge above $40 will get a bonus PRINTED BOOK: Growing the Garden. If you have already paid for an extra book, you will be refunded, of course. And everyone, every man, woman and child (who pledges, that is!) will get a commemorative Greeting Card panel. 

But we have to make our stretch goal first. Let all your friends know, keep spreading the word and thank you for supporting and believing in our Fantastic Garden!

Working on the Doodles

I have officially begun work on the Doodle Rewards. A couple of people emailed me expressing interest in a set of the color doodle woodcuts, okay so one is my Mom (but whatever!). And so I thought while I wait for the big blocks of wood to arrive I would start working on the little darlings. Here is a silly video to illustrate the beginning of a woodcut print:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybERkJcbxko

At the end of the video you can see a printout of the Fantastic Garden sketch on one of my work tables, I printed over 8 standard pieces of paper, about one-quarter scale of the real thing. I usually draw right on the blocks and adjust the design as I go to make sure the puzzle pieces are suitable for tiny woodcut images. I am so ready for my big blocks to get here!

Meanwhile, I'll keep working on the doodles...

Fantastic Garden Headquarters: http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com

Updates! Participants and finances online

Bit of Record Keeping

A project like this has a lot of behind the scenes busy work that, unfortunately, does not involve drawing, carving or printing. But it is very necessary to be meticulous about keeping the books or herding, er, I mean directing 80 printmakers can quickly become overwhelming.

First thing was to build the participant list from the Kickstarter list of backers. FYI Kickstarter does not give me any information aside from names, about the project backers or participants. After the funding period is done (May 3) then I will send a survey to everyone and get addresses for mailing the blocks. The faster you answer, the faster you get your goodies!

But for now, as I await my big box of cherry ply, I put up a participant list on this blog. Many names are repeat participants so I grabbed their location from previous projects, in case you wonder about that. Just click on the Participant List link in the main menu under the blog header.

Finally, I set up the accounting/ accountability page so everyone knows how time and money are spent. Now when someone asks, "where does the time go?", you will know the answer!

Exciting stuff, huh?

Fantastic Garden Headquarters: http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com

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