Prints of 2024

This year I carved 17 designs, and printed 16 of them (more on that missing one later). At some point during the year, I decided to strive for one printing session a week, during community hours at a local art gallery/collective where I’m a member. In all, I had 24 printing days, which was short of the initial print-every-week schedule, but that weekly cadence was more about establishing a rhythm of working than an output goal. For a number of non-printing days, I still showed up, but carved or drew instead.

This year also marked my first multi layer prints in several years. Seven in total: three were reductions, three were multi block, and one had an initial solid layer, which is the most trivial reduction, so I’m separating it. The experience with these forced me to experiment with registration tools. I assembled 4 different jigs of varying complexity, and have been pretty happy with the latest, made of Lego.

Monument

This was mostly an (unsuccessful) experiment with straight lines. There are a couple qualities/effects that I’m proud of, but for the most part, this was a flop. This would also begin an unintentional series of alternative framings from my prior standard, paper aligned, border.

Honu

untitled wedding card

My sister got married this year, and I decided to make a card for the occasion. Like the Totoro print from last year, I forgot to take a picture of the final prints (of which there were only two), so this is a photo of an early proof. Looking at it now, there are a lot of things I’d clean up, and I imagine many of them I did actually clean up, but probably not all of them.

Rose II of Aberlone

Someone saw me while working on my sister’s wedding card, and asked if I took commissions. I hadn’t, but was potentially open to it. The commission was for a block inspired by the court case of Sherwood v. Walker, and the cow at the center of it: Rose.

Twin Timpani

Because of the time spent on the Rose print, I wanted to knock something out quickly, and found a sketch in my sketchbook that seemed a good candidate.

Calla Lily

I used a very crude registration tool for this, but ensured that the design was pretty lenient to compensate. My prior multi-layer prints had been done with water based inks, and so I was unprepared for the behavior of these particular oil-based ones. You can see the blue layer is applied too thick, where it’s landing upon the earlier yellow layer. Overall I was pretty pleased with this. Some close to me remarked that it was far prettier and more colorful than anything they expected me to make.

Moray

This was adapted from a photo I took while in Peru. I approached it as what I called a “cautious reduction”, where even if I screwed up, the final later would be usable on its own.

The green dried considerably darker than I remember it being while mixing, which was a disappointment. I used a cardstock and linoleum registration jig that was absolutely not up to the task. I ended up only getting three acceptable prints. This also marked the last print with my old baren stand-in, which due to its shape really struggled with large fields of color.

Forgetful

Draw Time: Monstera

Some friends of mine have a nearly daily time set aside for getting together and drawing. I’m a rare attendee, personally. They’ve lately started using gouache during “Draw Time”, and I joined for this session with a monstera reference photo. It took me more than the 90 minutes or so we had together to produce some images, but it was nice to participate.

My first piece with a Lego registration jig. It ended up being too small to get great registration, but was enough to prove the concept.

Hang In There!

Submitted to SFMOMA’s open call for sports related art. While it wasn’t selected, it still got to be on display for a day.

The Crazy Crab was an iconic, reviled, and short-lived mascot for the San Francisco Giants. The pieces that were selected seemed, generally, far less specific to the Bay Area than I’d expected. A highlight of the submissions was the mass of A’s fans who submitted “SELL THE TEAM” art. The major donor to the SF MOMA is the Fisher family, whose son owns the A’s.

Hawaii Kai

The first piece with the larger, adjustable Lego registration jig. I had excellent alignment results with this, and was instead only let down by carving mistakes.

Knocked Loose

Halloween

Dancing Queen

This was the first 2-layer print where I got design registration across blocks figured out. The Crazy Crab print was forgiving, since the mascot himself has some pretty messed up eyes.

Not The End Of The World

There’s no photo for this one, as I never finished it.

I began it as a kind of mantra or affirmation, to counter a tendency I have to freak out about minor problems (e.g. parking). I missed two of my printing days for reasons I can’t recall anymore, and by the time I was ready to finish carving and print, it was the day after the election. Its message began to feel flippant, so I shelved it. Perhaps I’ll return to it in the future.

Sanctuary

In response to the above, I decided to use that day getting in touch with and checking in on friends. I sketching this up quickly, to make something a bit more befitting the moment than the prior design.

Gifts

My New Year’s print for 2024. It’s interesting to observe how much more careful and particular I am when carving when it’s depecting someone I care deeply about.