Thursday, May 9, 2013

Block Carving and Printing on Paper and Fabric

The weekend is when I usually have time to post a new blog, but this weekend was pretty busy.  On Saturday I taught a workshop through our guild on how to carve and print a block on paper and fabric.

 On Sunday, we helped one of our sons move back home into his old room, which had been my studio since he moved out about four years ago.  It's been very hard to give up that space. I've really enjoyed having a place to call my own, where I can just shut the door on the mess.  But, you got to help your kids out. My parents took me back to help me regroup, when I was in my twenties, so I'm just playing it forward.  He does have a job, so I don't think he'll be here too long.  I plan to just enjoy the time with him, as I know I'll be missing him as soon as he leaves again.  So all my stuff, which of course, turned out to be more than I thought I had, had to be boxed up and moved into the tack room next to the barn.  There's only a few more weeks of school left and then I'll have to time to work on the tack room and make it work as a  temporary studio for the summer.

Back to the Block Carving and Printing.

I really enjoy block carving and printing. In college, we had an assignment to make a large print of a favorite local building.  I chose the Milwaukee War Memorial and Art Center.  It was a great piece of architecture with a wonderful collection of art that I enjoyed visiting often.  Here's my print and block of it.


When carving a block, you need to remember that the print will be the mirror image of the block, 
so for text to be readable in the print, it needs to be carved in reverse.  This one is a large one, 18 by 24 inches.  It's so old, it's getting a little cracked in place. 

 Here's another one from my college days.  I don't have the block anymore, 
just some of the prints I made

What a creative, fun group of women turned out for my class on block carving and printing.  They made some great stuff.  Here's some pictures of what they did.

This is Jan's print, which has a lot of great movement and pattern.  All these blocks were the 2 x 2 inch ones and then depending how you turned them you could get some great secondary images where the designs meet in the center.  Jan went on to carve and print a wonderful Aztec bird design.





 
The three above are Sheryl's blocks and prints.  Great use of negative and positive space.  Removing the negative areas of a block with care and thought can add a lot to your design, 
in terms of movement and texture.


 Above is fabric printed by Kathy and her curved spiral block. She used Pebeo Setacolor copper metallic paint.  Looks great, doesn't it? 


This is one I printed in a class in Oregon ant the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts 
in a great class taught by Jeannette DeNicolis Meyer. 
 There's a couple of layers of surface design here; potato dextrin and the block printing.

Hope you're inspired  to get out those carving tools and start creating.

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