Carving Again

Classes have started back up at City College and that means my Saturdays are once again full of printmaking and lino carving; it's wonderful! As usual, I'm carving trees, though this year is proving to be quite different from previous years. My new Flexcut carving tools mean I can carve more quickly and cleanly, leading to more graphic images. I'm trying to figure out how this fits into the rest of the series. Who knows, I may just have to start doing multi-block carvings...

Linoleum Preparation

Prepping my image on linoleum with pencil and Sharpie

After a week filled with bookmaking, last Saturday I took a break from books to prep a linoleum block for carving.

As usual, I started by tracing one of my photographs. The body of work that is currently in progress focuses on trees. This image in particular was taken in the forest in Ashland, Oregon.

After the tracing was complete, I used carbon paper to transfer the outlines of the tracing onto a blank linoleum block, in reverse.

To give myself a rough idea of what the image will look like once it's  carved, I fill in any sections not meant to be carved away with Sharpie.

My block is ready to go and I'll begin carving this weekend.

Back to Lino

Classes have started up again, which means I'm spending my Saturdays in the printmaking studio at Fort Mason. I've been drawn to linoleum carving for a while so that is what I want to focus on this semester. 

 Given that my drawing skills aren't phenomenal, I've decided to try a new technique, tracing my photographs. This is the source photo for the linoleum block I was carving today.

The tracing, reversed and inked in with Sharpie on the lino block. Let me just say, those bricks are none to easy to carve out. After 6 hours hunched over the table, carving, I'm still not quite finished.

It was a very windy and somewhat rainy day today in San Francisco. I'm glad I got to work next to the radiator.