slightly wonky

Last night’s woodcut print class was great.  I brought two large woodcuts, and a smaller one.  Annie, the teacher, did a great job by suggesting that I combine the two woodcuts to make a single print.  So, here is the first print, which was from the woodblock shown in the last post:

I liked this one, even though it’s kind of crazy.  The orange splotches are shellac, which wasn’t quite dry yet.  Those won’t appear again.  This was my second block, which I thought ended up rather dull:

I wanted to do something very different than the first.  I did something vaguely architectural, just to get it out of my system.  It seems a bit lifeless to me.  Then, I threw together this tiny one:

I abandoned this one, as I didn’t really have a plan for it.  I paired the first two blocks together, which I think looks kind of interesting:

I might stick with this size of block, and do other combinations like this.  All of these prints are on newsprint, unfortunately.  Maybe next week, I’ll switch to real paper.  Newsprint will crumble in a few years.

So, here is the first of the hybrid, mutant plant prints:

Hilarious, right?  I love it.  I was totally apathetic about the architectural block at first, but now I think it’s so funny to have this crazy plant thing in the mix.  So, this was the improved version:

I love this!  So funny.  I love the craziness invading the staid architectural space.  I think that I may do more of these combinations.  What do you think?  I really like this type of printmaking.  The colors are beautiful…I love the messy, handmade quality of the marks…and the layering is so interesting.  I need to build up an inventory of blocks, so that I can do some more layering.  So many possibilities!

Here’s a scrap of my newsprint, which I thought looked neat as well:

I’m itchy to carve/print more of these.  Luckily, my poison ivy has gone, so THAT itchy has gone away…