In an attempt to try something different, I decided to try and do a wood block print, I decided to try my hand at something that might be a bit out of my depth for a first attempt. I wanted to try something that was a plain black and white image (no greys) so I knew what needed to be carved out and what needed to be left for the print. Being lazy and not wanting to draw something up myself, I decided to use an image of a friend (Murdoch) who primarily uses a lot of solid black and white in his artwork.

Tools & Materials
Plywood, Dremel (rotary hand tool), spray adhesive, paper, sand paper, block ink, roller, take away lid, teaspoon.

Progression

[View with PicLens]

After months of fucking about, I finally printed this monkey. First attempt (above) really didn’t come out the way i hoped. This meant I had to go and quickly get so more materials to help finish off the project. Results below.

Two on canvas blocks, two on red card. One pair is for me and the other pair is going to Murdoch. The block will probably go to him as well.

For the next one i attempt, I am not going to do two things.

1. Don’t use plywood. Using the Dremel has its advantages when it comes to being able to cut and carve with speed, but with plywood it doesn’t really cut so much as it tears. And withthe piece of plywood I had, it made to edges looked fraid. Also you couldn’t really carve to deep and get the definition i was after in places.

2. Don’t glue paper to use as your trace for the design. Sure, sounds good at first but the turns into a prick of thing to get off once you are done. You can also tear off part of your design before you have carved that area too. So next time, I’ll put in a little more effort in at the start and trace to design to some carbon paper or something.

Job done.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 17:55 and is filed under Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.