Lead Me Out and Lemonade

Conversation With a Canyon II: Lead Me Out

"So how do you like it?

Good, all good, it is very peaceful in here

Are you staying? Few wander in, you know

A little while, I brought lunch

I have water, here and there, clean and cold...

...........

What if I spend the night on that cool bed of sand

I will keep you safe, I will let in the moonlight and the moss scented winds

(to be continued)

Lead Me Out, already transferred to the color block and ready to be printed

Lemonade

When life gives you lemons...

Takes a bunch of daily exposure to keep up the online sales and I still miss the festival life and the face to face contact with customers. These days, it would be mask to mask I suppose but some of us in the "high risk" category are advised to stay away from crowds altogether so even if there WERE any festivals to go to, I would have to abstain. I tweet and post on Facebook and Instagram often, many artists do that now and it is good to see more art on those platforms. 2020 be over!!!!!!

SO! Online shops are the only thing. With the help of my friends at Google (!) I am working on improving my main website and actually I am pleased with the results both on visits and sales. One thing that I enjoy is the messaging system, I have Facebook Messenger linked to my site so many times visitors strike up a conversation and it has the "feel" of a visit to my booth.

EBay has some features that I enjoy such as the bargaining that goes along with the Best Offer feature and the back and forth of offers and counter-offers. Almost like being in the booth on a Sunday afternoon, almost!

I have had more time to finish some editions of little prints that never got done. And I am enjoying using up all the handmade paper in my flat files. My happy studio is a great place, I really like working daily on different things and there is always plenty to do. Working, for me, is bliss and I will leave you with that thought.

Stay in touch!

1000woodcuts Website: https://1000woodcuts.com 
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

Conversation With a Canyon I is done!

The Inky Stuff

Finished print I on the two-part series of canyons. Now that I'm "in" the canyon, I have to carve my way out. Here are all the printing photos of Lure Me In

Decided on the color scheme
now the real stuff, all Daniel Smith (RIP)
oil based inks

First proofs
the stripes are done a la poupee
another way of saying applied free-hand
with a tiny roller

The block inked and assembled,
ready to print

There we go, about 55 or so
paper is Rives BFK tan

Key block with all 
the definition

Overprinted the key block
in umber-purple-red-more-umber

Final prints, "Lure Me In"

Stay in touch!

1000woodcuts Website: https://1000woodcuts.com 
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

Artist Roles: Supporting My Art Habit

Roles of the Artist

In my view, the productive printmaker needs an outlet for created works. As you may know, my very favorite venues are art festivals. I have been an active art festival artist for almost 20 years! Through the years I have tried a variety of approaches to festivals, from going on the road almost full-time and attending 30 per year to a very comfortable 5-8 per year. Of those some are local but most are "the big ones," that is, well attended, well established, proven successful festivals.

Yeah...that was LAST year! This year I am attending a grand total of zero festivals. My first "year off" since I began this crazy adventure. Why, you ask? I have unfinished art projects every place I look in the studio. Carved blocks waiting to be printed, drawn blocks waiting to be carved, half-started books waiting to be written, new ideas waiting to come to life, this and that...

I am making a firm commitment to attempt to finish at least some of them, how's that for a hazy promise!

Sales Continue Online

But reality is that there are all those prints in my flat files and, after a busy festival year, some leftover matted and framed works begging to be shown. And so I turn to online sales to continue to support my art habit.

One art carrier at a time, I have been uploading framed works and blocks. Next week I begin with matted works.

To spur sales along, I will conduct a "special" each month. This blustery March I begin by offering either:

25% OFF with checkout code MARCHLION25

or

free shipping with code FREESHIPPING

My shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/1000woodcuts

Stay in touch!

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

Struck and Uprooted

Going big!

Only one more print to get ready for the upcoming exhibit at the OXS Gallery in Nevada!
These larger prints make me wonder what the heck was I thinking when I decided to go big. Miniatures! next life... But the "big ones" do tend to give me a sense of satisfaction and achievement. They take much energy and work to complete, especially when that other Maria decided to entertain large editions. Really? Anyhow, this particular image, Uprooted along with Struck happen to be two of my most heartfelt.

When art means something...

Struck

Struck, in memory of my father

Last week I finished printing an image called Struck. In 1998 or thereabouts, my father suffered a stroke and subsequently  required help to get along life. After seeing him shrunken in a wheelchair in the corner of his apartment, we took him into our home. His brother, then a contractor, built an addition to our house so that he could remain somewhat independent yet allow me to care for him.

He was lightly struck, as far as strokes go, retaining most of his abilities to walk with a limp and eventually speak normally. His right hand was near useless. Reading that stroke victims after 70 have a dismal survival rate over two years, I decided to take over his care...as much as he would let me.

During the next eleven years I ripped the wheelchair out of his life and exchanged it for a three-wheeled bicycle, later a scooter when the bicycle became impossible to pedal. He was in every sense of the word, independent (read: stubborn). We fought, we yelled, we laughed and in the end I was happy I took on the task of helping him along until the end in 2009.

Uprooted

Uprooted, for all those that leave past for future

Detail

Uprooted is a homage to all those who can't, on any given vacation, revisit their childhood home. In 1974 we immigrated to the US from Spain, but previously my family with a not-quite two year-old Maria, was uprooted from Cuba. I don't remember Cuba at all, but I do remember Spain quite well with very good and happy memories of growing up with the initial help of Las Filipenses, the happiest collection of nuns.

A family of five, we left with two suitcases about of the size of today's carry-ons and that still reside in one of my closets. The most salient memory of the trip to the US was that of leaving Barcelona on a train to Madrid, from where we would eventually fly to America. That train left in the dark of night with friends surrounding my parents. I remember someone mentioning that I wasn't crying but the phrase was muffled and distant. Then the train left and I remember entering the darkness of a tunnel.

That tunnel has stayed with me, both as a refuge and as a reminder of past places and of hopeful futures. It isn't at all depressing,  but merely a place where I felt safe and guarded from distant pasts and unknown futures. Uprooted once more, ready to grow roots in a new place yet never forgetting the last.

When I hear people talk about immigrants today, a part of me thinks of that tunnel and I know that they probably have their own safe tunnels where their souls reside temporarily until they can lay root again.

YouTube Videos and Housekeeping

Videos

A short post to introduce a few YouTube videos on my own channel. I also follow some other woodcut channels that post interesting information from time to time. It's the video generation, I guess, although I still enjoy a good solid book I have become more and more accustomed to getting information from videos because that seems where the future is going.

My video skills will improve in time I suppose, and undoubtedly I will sometime get an HD Camcorder. For now, the HD webcam and the Canon Powershot Pro are doing all the heavy lifting. I edit with Photoshop Premiere Elements and I'm learning a bunch with every step!

http://www.youtube.com/user/1000woodcuts

Housekeeping!

Nothing like the spring to instill a desire to clean house, or is it just me?! Anyhow, I go through these moods where I look at stuff in my studio and say: "What was I thinking?" Subsequently, my alter ego cleanedmystudio (EBay ID) helps me out in such conundrums and pretty soon I have shelf space again!
Usually my cleaning sprees last about two or three weeks, few items daily, all printmaking/art relatged, all at bargain prices...some woodcut prints too!

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!

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!

Bookstore and Links Pages

Just updated the Bookstore and Links pages on this blog!

Direct Link to Bookstore:
http://printmakingstudionotes.blogspot.com/p/book-store.html

Direct Link to Links Page:
http://printmakingstudionotes.blogspot.com/p/links.html

These were rescued from my website and will be updated frequently.

Books will be added as I mention them in my upcoming posts but if there is a favorite that you have, please mention it and I will check it out (let's face it, I'll probably buy it!). Link recommendations also welcomed but please make sure they are relevant to printmaking, woodcut, woodblock only as my last links page became a monster that ate the entire web. Well, it was big anyway.

You can reach the Bookstore and the Links pages by clicking on the top navigation tabs below the title of this blog, above this post. I am also in the process of redesigning my blog and website so those links will become more prominent as I make progress on that "little" side project. Sigh.

Enjoy the new pages! Bookmark and share them.

Keeping Records Part II

As promised, database details to make you dizzy:

Database vs. Spreadsheet

The advantage of a database over a spreadsheet, as I said last time, is the "relational" feature that links all your data and the eternal flexibility for manipulating data. The software packages that I pointed out last time are really databases that have been fancied up to make data entry and retrieval easy for everyone.

But if you don't want to fork out any bucks, have a little time on your hands and like doing your own thing, a database is really simple to set up. Most of them come with templates that can be tweaked to taste for art record keeping.

The main advantage of doing your own thing is that it suits you perfectly and you can change things over the years as you evolve or devolve or whatever.

What can you do for me?

One example of features you gain by creating a database is the ability to "query" or ask it questions like:
-How many works did I sell to NEW customers on last year's Flagstaff Festival? (should I mail postcards or are my customers mostly tourists coming to the show for the first time?)
-Who has all my "Mountain Sunrise" prints and where have they been exhibited? (provenance)
-How many contacts did I gain on my Museum Show in 2004? How many are still receiving my emails and how many have bought something since then? (is it worth doing the show again?)
-Who of my Arizona customers has not bought anything in the last 5 years? (I can clean up my database that way)

You get the picture. Invaluable information if you are in the business of selling or exhibiting artworks.

Spreadsheet data, if you recall, is flat (see the link to a sample spreadsheet last post), although for just keeping artwork records making up a simple spreadsheet is exactly what I would do.

Guts of a database (or software) 

Database data is based on table-like-spreadsheets BUT the tables are "linked" or related to each other by one of the variables. Here is what my old database looks like:

I have three main tables: WORKS, CONTACTS, and SHOWS

There are other tables in there but they are auto-generated by the BIG 3 for various reports

Notice all those joining lines that go from one table to another, they link together works through the ID field with customers through the ID field. So at any point I can get a full report of where ALL my prints are, everyone of them, sold, given away, shown in a gallery, whatever. Also, when I enter a new customer, I just have a pull-down field with all my works so I don't have to write the print's name. And when I enter that work, the database automatically subtracts one print from my "prints on hand" field. Nifty huh? A lot of tricks like that are possible that make keeping track of everything and everyone related to the art business a snap.

The main way to input and keep data in a database is through tables, although with one click you can create a fancy input form to make the task more bearable:

Here you can see an entire record for a work called 1000 Years including where it was exhibited, how big the frame should be and whether I've taken slides (how OLD is this thing?) and uploaded to my website

The other two main features of a database is the ability to query (ask complex questions) as I mentioned before and the ability to export reports, fancy or not, to other programs like Microsoft Word (to send a mailing), spreadsheet (like an inventory of prints on hand) or your favorite mail program (to send an email to your customers) or to make a print info sheet or web page, pictures and all.

Anyhow, one point of this post is that, whatever method of keeping track of works, sales and contacts one chooses, the important thing is to put in good information so that good information can be reported. Accurate data entry is crucial, whether a ready-made software program, a simple spreadsheet or any other fancy way to keep records.

I happen to like tweaking my database endlessly, I have reports, resumes, lists of galleries, who sold what to whom in what event and so on. I enjoy the brain work of querying, making my database spit out fancy reports and formatted letters and so on. And I have now tailored my database to fit my business model perfectly.

This all sounds complicated when writing it down but really databases are just like the software described in the previous post. The advantage, to me, is that I can change things as I see fit.

Any questions? quiz at 11:00!

Sample Simple Record Keeping

Sample simple...heh heh, couldn't resist!

Just a little while ago, my friends in http://barenforum.org were asking about record keeping for printmakers.
First you have to decide what sort of records you want to keep and make decisions on whether you want to keep everything integrated or just jot down information about each art work. You may want to consider keeping records on sales, gallery submissions and exhibits, works created, collector's demographics and, oh, so much more.

Here are some books to consider:

Indispensable! Constance Smith's Art Office, Second Edition: 80+ Business Forms, Charts, Sample Letters, Legal Documents & Business Plans (Art Office: 80+ Business Forms, Charts, Sample Letters, Legal)

Art Marketing 101 has pretty good info on what may be important down the road Art Marketing 101, Third Edition: A Handbook for the Fine Artist (Art Marketing 101: A Handbook for the Fine Artist)

Quite a bit of information about what galleries expect from artists in "Starving" to Successful: The Fine Artist's Guide to Getting Into Galleries and Selling More Art

Software

If you want to keep integrated records of artwork, collectors, submissions and exhibits (for example) you will need integrated software. There are various out-of-the-box choices on the web, all of them seem adequate enough, these are the ones I have looked at:

ArtWork Archive
http://www.artworkarchive.com/
Seems pretty cool with many features, great feature is online backups, drawback is "revolving" charge which I'm allergic to big time. But all in all a very complete package.

Working Artist
http://www.workingartist.com
I have not downloaded and tried this one but the features are there and the price is right. More features than the previous and really an affordable solution. Another advantage is they have been around for a while and upgrade as needed so you won't be stuck with an obsolete software (I have seen many others come and go).

Art Systems
http://www.artsystems.com/
If you can afford this dawg or if you manage a gallery or a group of artists, go for it. I don't think there is a feature that this doesn't have and I based my own database on their screenshots. I think about forking out this much money but I can always think of how much paper I could buy instead.
Still, all in all, a great software package now with cloud backup and all the bells and whistles.

But what about FREE?

Well, there's the do-it-yourself approach. At first any record keeping will do, but a spreadsheet is eternally malleable and can be exported to databases and practically any software. I started out with a simple spreadsheet based on what items I wanted to keep records for each of my prints. Here is a sample that may look familiar from Baren exchanges:

But I also want to know where my prints are located and other things, so here is a sample spreadsheet that I created in GoogleDocs based on that information:

http://tinyurl.com/sampleprintrecord

As you can see, you may want to add to the print information where you physically keep the prints and any images you have online or stored locally. Any other tidbits of info about each work can be added as you need to by adding a new column.

A simple spreadsheet is a good start for any printmaker, they are easy to use and, as I mentioned, very flexible when upgrading to something better. Not that there would be a need to upgrade. If you get handy with spreadsheets, you can filter records (for example to view only woodcuts, or only woodcuts created in 2005, or whatever). You can also merge the records with a program like MS Word and create print info sheets like the one above.

But a spreadsheet has what's called a "flat" file system. For record keeping and integrating with other spreadsheets, exporting reports such as gallery entries and artist resumes...well you really need a database. Since you're probably sleepy by now (I know I am), next post will outline a simple database, features of a database and how to create one that tells you stuff you may want to know about your art records.

More reading material for you: More books about legal aspects and business aspects of being an artist

I have most of the books that come up in that search but I just saw a new one! I better get it, can't read enough about this stuff.

Papers, the dreaded final chapter

More papers for your delight below.

Other books about paper that are worth building extra shelves for...not that it's something I would ever do!

Jules Heller Papermaking: How to Make Handmade Paper for Printmaking, Drawing, Painting, Relief and Cast Forms, Book Arts, and Mixed Media

Bo Rudin Making Paper: A Look into the History of an Ancient Craft

Herbert Holik Handbook of Paper and Board

Leonard M Rosenband Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century France: Management, Labor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill, 1761-1805


Papers:

Magnani Incisioni

Snow white, thick and absorbent, this is very much like Arches 88 except somehow it behaves better. It is especially suited for wood engravings or for embossing (surprise, since those two print-acts require such different characteristics). For a white paper, this is definitely the king. It is very smooth and accepts buckets of ink, layer after layer. It is  a strong paper that tears smoothly.

Magnani Pescia Blue/Cream/White

This paper is thick and soft and of an unusual light blue color. Pescia also comes in a beautiful cream and pure white. The surface is very smooth with no grain. Tears or cuts remarkably well. Basically "acts" like Arches 88 but better quality all around. It works well wet or dry, shrinks evenly (so it registers well), and takes much abuse so it is equally suitable for hand or press printing.  It embosses well because of the thickness and will take many layers of ink. It also accepts engravings and other printmaking methods, truly a king of papers. Pine Creek Escapade is printed on Pescia.

Masa

This is a great practice paper but also very very very! suitable for wood engravings. It is a Japanese paper, so it is thin and strong. comes heavily sized on one side, smooth like typing paper--no, smoother. The other side clearly shows the typical long fibers of Japanese papers (a great and affordable teaching tool). Other than that, it is snow white, thin and affordable. I buy it by the roll and keep it for proofing but also for engravings to get all that wonderful detail.

Mexican Bark

This hand-made paper is expensive and difficult to work with. Another one of those challenges! Unsized, tough, thick; made by beating bark "to a pulp" then forming sheets. It feels like thin layers of bark and absolutely will not accept ink unless dampened thoroughly. This doesn't mean it has to be soaked, just let the dampness travel well overnight. Printing requires a gel additive or the paper will stay on the block. It comes in ivory, chestnut, buckskin, and marble (a mixture of chestnut/buckskin and ivory). It is specially suited for simple images and will emboss nicely.  It will also tear nicely, not always where you want. It is impossible to cut or tear in straight lines, but wetting with a paint brush causes the paper to separate beautifully. A nice challenge for specially planned images.

Mulberry Natural

This is a thin, unsized, decorative paper that is tough to use in prints. The best use I can think of is for one-color prints, since the speckled greenish background of the paper adds plenty to the image. It behaves much like Japanese papers, that is, it loves ink and is strong, although not as strong and malleable as okawara or hosho. If you have a  specific image in mind like the Joshua Forest pictured, then it is a great paper and no other will do. I keep using it to print desert images.

Murillo Printmaking

This is a thick, cardboard-feeling, chunky and tough paper. It absorbs the ink well, but has to be soaked to print because in its dry state it is HARD! It comes in the pictured Chestnut and many other bright and buff colors. The cream Murillo is especially attractive. It has a distinct wavy pattern which will show in the finished print. After soaking and drying it is likely that it will buckle much like watercolor paper, so it has to be dried under weights between blotters. Murillo Chestnut was used for Hija Del Sol.

Niggeden

A meaty, German mould-made paper with very distinct waves running through the fibers. It is hard to the touch and medium weight, has to be dampened for printing. The waves will show through the finished print, so if you don't like that, don't use it. It absorbs the ink readily, although dry printing does not yield good results. The warmth of the tan paper is difficult to find in others, except Arches tan and Kitakata. Renaissance was printed on Niggeden.

Okawara

This is a thin, lightly sized on one side, beautiful paper that is a dream to print on. It works equally well dry or dampened, it is lightweight, warm in color. It prints equally well on the sized side and the unsized side, giving beautiful results either way (oil inks). Tears well, feels soft and strong.  If you are planning a big run, get all your paper in one order because the rolls (36"x72") can vary quite a bit in color. Also, there are different qualities, some hand-made and some machine made which are cheaper but lack the "gorgeousness."

Rives de Lin

This very expensive paper is so full of personality that I can't help using it, even though it's really meant for drawing. When I try to explain to someone how beautiful paper can be, I merely show them  a sheet of this stuff. Rives de Lin is snow white and toothy, but don't let that stop you as it absorbs ink as well as any of the Magnani papers. The images are softer because the 'shallows' of the paper will remain white. It is a heavy Western type paper that I love using for soft effects. It will accept layer upon layer of ink and the final effect can look like a watercolor. Tears beautifully and in fact the tears are closer to a real deckle than when tearing any other paper. It is, however, expensive but well worth it and comes in rolls for the adventurous.

Rising Stonehenge

A very affordable all printmaking purposes paper. Advantages are numerous: comes in a variety of soft colors and black, it is a Western heavy paper ideally suited for both woodcuts and wood engravings, embosses well, prints great wet or dry. It is lightly sized internally, so it is a bit harder (non-spongy) than the Magnani papers. It tears great and with a nice imitation deckle edge. Comes in all sizes. Behaves in every occasion and comes in a wide range of creams, tans and off whites. I know we printmakers are supposed to use more expensive papers, but this is a definite winner with me and I can't see a downside. Also comes in rolls.

History of the Woodcut

I thought maybe I would begin my 1000 Studio Notes with a brief history of the woodcut, shamelessly lifted (with due credit) from Ross and Romano's "The Complete Relief Print". I highly recommend the book to any woodcut enthusiast.

Here is the text from my website, which is now one studio note "thinner":

The Woodcut: Introduction and History
(Verbatim from Ross & Romano's The Complete Relief Print, 1974, The Free Press N.Y.)
"Of all the forms of expression in printmaking, the woodcut is the most ancient. Its early beginnings in Egypt and China came from the use of wooden stamps designed to make symbolic or decorative impressions in clay and wax. With the development of paper on the Chinese mainland in the second century A.D., the stamping devices gradually evolved into wood blocks. As plank wood was utilized by the artist and the craftsman, he was able to cut and print more sophisticated and complex designs. Many of the earliest images were for popular Buddhist religious use. The woodcut came to Japan from China, in the wake of Buddhism, in the sixth century A.D. The early Japanese woodcuts were also religious in subject matter. It was not until the 17th century that a more highly developed art began to come forth. The Japanese printmaker's concept of the symbolism of subject matter, asymmetric composition, the use of flat color, pattern, and line were a great influence upon the work of Gauguin, Van Gogh, Lautrec, Whistler, and others.

The woodcut in western art evolved as a later expansion of the utilitarian printing of textiles from wood blocks used extensively in the early 14th century. Though paper from the east was known in Spain in the 11th century, it was not until paper was produced in large quantities in France, Italy, and Germany in the 14th century that the art of the woodcut began to unfold. In southern Germany, woodcuts began as primitive religious figures. Their directness, simplicity of line, and economy of means made them very powerful. They were handbills for veneration, sold for pennies to pilgrims visiting holy places and to the populace on religious feast days. Woodcuts of Christ or the Virgin Mary were often pasted inside traveling chests or onto small altar pieces and frequently sewn into clothing to give protection from evil forces. As the invention of printing from movable type became a reality in the mid-15th century, the woodcut began to appear in more highly developed forms as illustrations for religious books. By the late 15th century the great artists of the time, Durer and Hans Holbein in Germany, Lucas von Leyden in the Netherlands, and Titian in Italy were using this new medium with great eloquence. After the mid-16th century, the woodcut began to decline in importance as a vehicle for aesthetic expression. The richness and flexibility of line engraving and etching attracted most of the major artists dealing with the print.

The woodcut and, later, the wood engraving became a means for reproducing popular painters and was used extensively for book, magazine, and newspaper illustrations. It was not until the revival of the woodcut as a sensitive, personal art form in the late 19th century, that it regained its place as a major expressive form. The prints of Gauguin, strongly influenced by the Japanese prints being exhibited in Paris, the prints of the German Expressionists who were returning to the simplicity of the early German Medieval woodcuts, and the prints of the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch greatly helped to renew interest in the woodcut as a serious contemporary art form. With this revival of the woodcut as a fine print medium came a new spontaneity and creative use of the material. Until the late 19th century the woodcut was in a sense reproductive.

The woodcuts of the German Renaissance, including those by Durer and Holbein, had often been cut by highly skilled craftsmen from drawings made by the artists directly on the blocks. The prints became very fine facsimiles of exquisite pen drawings, having little relation to the quality of the wood. Line became the important element, mass or wood grain was rarely used. However, the artist-craftsman system, with the artists doing the creative work and the craftsman the cutting, enabled Durer and his contemporaries to produce a tremendous number of prints.

 Japanese printmakers also developed the same system. The artists designed the images, and the skilled craftsmen cut and printed the blocks. In succeeding years, with the artist so removed from the wood and creating in less gifted hands, it was inevitable that the print became a reproductive image until the new approaches of the late 19th century artists. Because the contemporary artist uses the wood more freely with a real sense of the material and usually cuts and prints his own blocks, a more complete knowledge and respect for the material's potential comes forth. The aesthetic freedom of the 20th century artist has enabled him to make new discoveries through experimentation and given him a richer utilization of the medium."

  NOTE: This book is by far one of the best I have read on Relief Printmaking. It is out of print but it sometimes becomes available from various vendors, live link follows:
 The Complete Relief Print: The Art and Technique of the Relief Print, Children's Prints, Care of Prints, Collecting Prints, Dealer and the Edition

New blog?! Printmaking Studio reborn

In my spare time I've been tinkering with my unwieldy website and decided to take my method section to a blog. More organized that way, or so I say.

Anyhow, without further ado, here is the Printmaking Studio reborn:
http://printmakingstudionotes.blogspot.com/

Subscribe, enjoy, contribute...

The new and improved Printmaking Studio has moved here!

Time for a website remodel!



The sweet smell of an inky studio...

For a while now I have been managing my website with tons of pages and growing like a bad weed. My Studio Notes section, containing all the knowledge, method, tips and tricks, will be making its way to this blog with new pictures and revised content.

Should take the rest of the year to complete the remodel, I would think. Right now I'm on manic mode and everything seems possible!

As I move away from the website, content should be more searchable and better organized. Meantime, just like before, I welcome contributions from printmakers regarding method of any sort, tiny tips or big processes, as related to woodcut and woodblock as possible.

Happy printing everyone!