Work continues: blocks being cut

Here are the last couple of days worth of work, phew!

Sketch being transferred to blocks by my cat

Willow charcoal to strengthen the lines

Lines gone over with sumi ink, final details changed

A nice bath of walnut ink over the sumi lines to make carving visible

And of course, THE KEY to the puzzle pieces while the walnut ink dries.
Cutting proceeds tomorrow, lord willin' and the creeks don't rise...

Where did the winter go?!

Where did the winter go already?
Oh yeah, finished remodeling the kitchen and printed this print and another one for two exchanges (will someone remind me NOT to sign up for anything else?), and coordinated the latest Barenforum.org exchange.

I'm also working on a mega-project, another collab puzzle, can be followed here:
http://puzzleprints.blogspot.com/

But make art we must, lest we go insane.
Meet my latest creation, "Fool on the Hill".
Here are the specs:

Print Title: Fool on the Hill

Paper Dimension: 13" x 6"
Image Dimension: 12" x 5"
Block: 8 Cherry
Pigment or Ink: Akua-Kolor
Paper: Nishinouchi Natural
Edition: 100

I am challenged and humbled by the process once more. More blocks, more chances to goof. In the end I think I ended up with a fairly good success rate on the prints despite my annoying habit of experimenting.

I used Akua-Kolor without rice paste, with rice paste applied separately and with rice paste mixed in. It flows better with paste, although the "without" look is very deserty.

Image: I grew up listening and memorizing Beatles songs even though I never understood the words until I learned English later in life. "The Fool on the Hill" attracted me as a child, which may give some insight into what kind of child I was.

I always liked nature and climbing and being where others could only point to in amazement. Three years ago in the Grand Canyon (South Rim, Colorado USA) I again had a chance to climb and sit on my hill, and watch the sun going down.

On the blocks!

Here we go! Flipped image sketched in charcoal

After sketching in pencil on the blocks, I reinforced and tweaked the image with one of my favorite drawing utensils: a willow charcoal stick. Makes for messy fingers but you can "erase" with the back of the hand, even on wood, and if you touch your nose while you are drawing, you end up looking like quite the (charcoal nosed) artist.

Anyhow, there it is, looking more and more like a true puzzle. Each piece is about 5-6 x 5-8 inches, some are irregular. There are about 106 pieces, ready for all the participants to fill with wonder. Next step is to ink the design with sumi to make the final adjustments, the drawing permanent and the individual blocks defined. Shouldn't take a half-day.

After a good sanding and staining with walnut ink on both sides to make carving easier, the puzzle-piece cutting begins, that all should take about two days at most. I bought a piece of thick styrofoam to support the wood and avoid all that twirling, thank you Doug Haug for reminding me of that jig-saw technique. More pictures as I chop chop.

I finally finished another two projects so my attention is fully on this task until the blocks fly out the door, so to speak.

Progress on the Great City!

The Great City of the World is getting drawn on the blocks this week. I just love doodling in Photoshop!!!
I started out by grabbing a bunch of ideas from clip art mostly, some from my head, some from actual cities. After much MUCH mulling and eliminating some ideas that were too detailed or just not suitable, I settled on about 6 sketches from which I made a composite preliminary sketch.

Now I confess I'm not much of a "pre-sketcher" for my own work, but this "problem" needs some planning. I have five vertical blocks to fill, each is about 22" x 30" (55 x 76 cm). The blue dividing lines in the sketch above indicate more or less the block divisions. And of course the overall sketch has to be divided into smaller puzzle pieces, so detail is not possible and clear composition is a must.

Next is to translate and simplify that messy sketch into the blocks. Now THAT I like! I love drawing directly on the wood. I already reversed the initial sketch because I like the composition above and printed each block a bit bigger for guidance.

Blocks are ready to go and I'm heading for the pencil drawer. I imagine that the final composition will change a bit, especially because as I draw I need to be able to mentally divide each of the five blocks into 20 little pieces (more or less).

So here we go! We have a downtown, suburbia, apartment living, a park, trees, sky, factories, office buildings, a river, boats, cars, trucks and buses...something for everyone.