Prints of 2023

This year, I started working more “seriously” with block printing. By “serious”, I mean setting aside time for practicing, reading about printmaking, and studying other printmakers.

Haight & Webster

This one was essentially fan art. I copied it from a tag someone had thrown up on the titular corner, Haight and Webster. This was my first block after years of not having touched the medium, and given that I was out of practice, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. It was also my first attempt with text, and since at this stage I wasn’t using anything to convert initial sketches to their mirrored form on the block, that the letters look this accurate is a small miracle.

I regret that horizontal line on the bottom, and the couple nicks of the border that are related (as well as just poor blade control).

Candle

Made for my friend’s daughter’s first birthday. Quite unhappy with this. I’m glad I tried it, and I think some of the light line/starburst stuff will still be useful.

Topple

I’m relatively happy with how this came out. I probably should have used a reference for the chess piece, but it’s fine. Whatever I tried with the shadows didn’t work. I think I tried to use a narrow gouge for the “shaded” area, and a wider one where the table was to be brighter, but that didn’t translate well into something legible.

Tangela

Another piece of fan art, though this one is my own composition. My original desire was to make a Snorlax print, but I struggled to get something to work with the size of block and the shape of Snorlax. Giving up, I looked through the listing of the other original 150, and Tangela seemed promising, especially with those eyes glowing from the shadows.

Totoro Goes To TIFF

I gave away all the prints when I was in Toronto, so I only have this photo of the block. They were made for the people I was attending TIFF with. To commemorate the event, and to give myself a deadline, I decided to make a Totoro print in honor of the North American premiere of The Boy And The Heron. There ended up being two variants of this one. The first had the canonical teeth, but I thought it was horrifying. In the second variation, I carved the tooth lines away, and it reads instead as a happy, wide-open mouth. Much better.

Because of some prints with miserable alignment, I build myself a small jig when I got back home, to align 2.5” x 3.5” paper on a 2” x 3” block.

Happy Halloween

I’d intended to give these away at my Halloween stoop party (we get lots of trick-or-treaters), but forgot them until the last guest came inside while waiting for her bus. Because of the imminent (but turns out irrelevant) deadline, I half-assed the grass because I needed to move on to printing.

The first edition was done with a water based ink that, due to temperature or humidity or something else, started to noticeably dry while still on my glass plate. The result was an incredibly poor transfer to the paper.

I picked up some Cranfield Caligo Safe Wash inks after Halloween, to try oil based inks (even if still water washable), and it came out so much better, even under near identical room conditions.

Christmas Mischief

I picked up block printing with the intention of making my own New Year’s cards, and this was 2023’s design (for 2024). It was also the first edition of mine to “sell out”, which in this case means that more people requested a print that I’d actually made. I’m eager to move on to the next one (the block is already carved), but to satisfy requests, I’ll be doing a second edition shortly.