Hey Sugar

It was a friends birthday last week, and nothing in my stockpile of currently finished work seemed quite right.  So I finished off this baby thats been sitting in my half formed to-do stack :

Its one of four I started way back in Melbourne last year, as a carry on from my first colour blocked Sugar Skulls – Which I then got a little sidetracked from when my print class at APW hit.  The aim was to do a more detailed set, but it meant more time involved in the finishing layers. They somehow never got completed.

Well this one gave me the kick I needed to finish off the others :

I love the bright blocks of colour.  Glad I’ve finally got around to getting them done!

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Gap

So I’ve been totally remiss at keeping my blog up to date with all my work over the last few months. I wont go into any lengthy explanations as to the why – Instead here’s an overview of some of the bits I’ve completed in that time :

Unrest is a hand-finished woodblock print I started back in 2004, but was unable to complete within the over short time frame the course gave us. The blocks are somewhere our bottomless pit of a storage unit in Wgtn, so I finished the top two layers by hand in gouache and ink. Edition of 8

Back to the South American Tanager birds paired with coffee plants. Again, first of four that are in the works… Sidetracked again

Lastly a pair of native New Zealand Piwakawaka (Fantails) as per request for a friend of mine …Who then never got back to me about the piece. Ah well!

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Relief Print : Woodblock

This is the last instalment in my relief series – The third and final print I made during the four week evening class I took at Australian Print Workshop over in Fitzroy. Again, its a two colour print like my last. But this time using a woodblock as the relief medium, each colour printed from a separately carved plate.

This process involved cutting the key plate first – Even though it ends up being printed last. The key plate is then inked up and printed, the resulting image then transferred back onto the secondary plate to use as a guide.

When I started thinking about the image I wanted to cut, I knew the key plate would print up black, but our teacher Simon was choosing a ‘mystery’ colour for the second plate.  This miffed me a bit, because it meant coming up with an image that much harder… A basic two colour design that would look ok no matter which colour was picked.  In the end I went with an Anime scene I’ve been meaning to paint up for the last 6 years or so. The aim was to keep it mainly black and white, with the secondary colour to fill the background only. Hence the way I cut out my key plate.

Anyways I somehow lucked out. The secondary colour to be chosen a beige flesh tone. As I hadn’t yet cut my second plate, I reassessed my image and carved out different areas than the original plan. And so the background is now left in white.

I suppose this way I have the opportunity to carve a third block to colour in this area should I choose to print these blocks up again. And I can alway hand finish the prints I’ve already made if it keeps bothering me, which it may well do… See I went and used that grainy first transfer off my key plate as a guide and worked it up in gouache. Now the two-colour prints have an unfinished feel if compared side by side.

And so. After cutting these blocks, I can say I personally think that laminate wood is absolute shit for carving into.  Sure its a softer wood for easy cutting – But the top layer of veneer tends to lift off on its own in the finer ares, so my image was left with less detail than I would have liked. Not cool. Def. gonna stick w vinyl next time!

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Pick me up

Yay got to go pick up all my prints today from AWP so exciting getting to bring them all home and unwrap them!

Pretty tired tonight… Tui was kind enough to wake me up at 5.30 by shaking cold water all over me from the doll she’d just washed in the sink. Not in a very fun way to wake up, though quick… Really hope my yelp of shock has put her off doing it again!  Anyways. Means I’ll post up the rest of the pics with close ups tomorrow. Night x

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Editions

Just finished an edition of four New Zealand Tui perched on a red flowering flax branch, commissioned by the Auckland council Environmental services team.

I don’t usually do a lot of edition work, so it was a bit of a challenge to paint up four pieces to look the same.  Pretty stoked with how they’ve turned out though.

Now that these are complete and ready to send off to te courier I can finally spend some time planning the two colour wood block I need to make for the relief printing workshop I’ve enrolled in at Australian Print Workshop on Gertrude street in Fitzroy!

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