In the Studio: Books
[In the Studio, March 26, 2011 /Image & Artwork: designslinger_studio]
When I realized that if I wanted to be a printmaker that I was going to have to teach myself, I started with a pile of how-to books from the library. Plus books on the history of relief printmaking and pulling out some books that have been on our shelves for years. The history and general art books were very inspiring but reading through the books on technique and the actual process of relief printmaking was overwhelming at times. It was too much, too fast and often left my head spinning.
[In the Studio /Image & Artwork: designslinger_studio]
Underprinting and overprinting, transparent color and opaque, secondary hues with overprinting, drying time for some colors vs. others, inks and pressure, transferring images, overlaps, when using transparent inks laying down the lightest color first and proceeding by steps to the darkest, generally speaking dark colors are printed first and light ones last, do not overprint on a still-wet print, interesting color combinations can often be achieved by printing wet-on-wet, the key block, complex color compositions using the fewest number of blocks, three or six colors require three or six blocks, it is not always necessary to use a separate block for each color, using 5 blocks for 12 colors. And everywhere I looked the same warning: plan, plan, plan, don't just blunder around hoping everything will come out all right in the end.
Oy. When I started to draw, all that information was coursing through my brain, and so every line was fraught with peril. Are there too many lines, how will the colors work out, can I do this in a minimal number of blocks, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. I'd sometimes be exhausted just thinking about starting before I even began! So I pushed all that info into the background and decided that I had to come up with an image I was happy with and just work out all the rest from there. Things suddenly became much easier, the dam broke, and I was off and running.
Way to go... looking forward to your drawing unfolding...
They're coming along.
I can't believe they carve these by hand!
but just something interesting
http://www.westelm.com/pages/popup/vid-india-block-printing.html
xoxo
Thanks!