http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=033cjRyyeDs

video documents start-to-finish printing of one sheet around block four…

"Sara", 42 x 77 inch woodblock print (17 blocks) Permanent Collection, Beach Museum of Art

Sara woodcuts in press take-up drawer -- 14 of 17 blocks have been printed

Sara woodcuts in drawer after 14 of 17 blocks printed

"Sara" exhibited at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art September-October, 2006

Good lord, it’s hot in my studio! I’m working on “Sara”, a 17 block woodcut on ten sheets of 42 x 77 inch Iwano Ichibei hosho paper. Sweaty work and EXHAUSTING!!! I’m managing to print about 3 or 4 blocks per day and that’s really all I am able to manage! But I’m getting better and better at using the large press I built about seven or eight months ago, even though this is only the third edition I’ve pulled on it.

I handled registration a bit differently this time… The blocks were carved with three identical side kento, each about 1 1/2 inches long, and the center of the middle one was inscribed with a very narrow line. I used a razor blade to produce three flat edges in the deckle of each sheet (parallel to the edge of the sheet)so that they’d line up with the kento in the blocks, and I drew a short pencil line in the center of the middle ‘notch’ to be lined up with the line inscribed in the middle kento. Surprisingly, this worked very well, and I found it easy to register each sheet to the blocks, aligning the pencil mark with the inscribed line on the block. At the far edges, this resulted in about +/- .05 inch of dead on which is plenty close for the image and the eye. Given the size of the sheets I’m not sure I can do much better than that…

– Mike

'Leaves', Feb 2006, 77 x 42 inches, woodcut on handmade Japanese paper

detail

'Leaves' prints in takeup drawer after final impressions were pulled.

Here’s a short (3.4mb) movie showing the last impression of the last print (8 blocks were printed on each of 5 sheets) — ends with some dizzying (sorry) close-ups of the print showing rather intense detail:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFaUJBBXwn8

pulling the final impression

OK, here’s about 11 minutes of video showing the first prints coming off the large woodblock printing press I’ve built — the press bed it about 4 1/2 feet wide and 10 feet long and has a novel paper delivery humidor which can present sheets up to 4×8 feet for registering and printing by a single person (actually, I’m a married person, but I print solo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXLWKaSfe64

(carving and printing on new press)

The block on the press is a 4×8 foot sheet of 1/4 inch cherry plywood — easy for me to carry back and forth from the press to the carving machine (only a few feet apart) as this is to be a reduction print, so only one block will be carved, printed, and recarved through the eight printings for theimage.

The papers I’m printing are very thin and very fine Japanese Hosho made by Iwano Ichibei. These are the largest sheets Iwano-san has made in many years — 42 x 77 inches. The are also the largest sheets I’ve EVER handled! But the mechanical aids I’ve designed and built make it so easy!

I feel SOOOooo happy! It works even better than I’d hoped and seems very easy and straight forward… I have a few adjustments to make in moving the paper from the block into the printed paper humi-drawer under the press, but I think that should be a relatively simple improvement.

Considering that these are the VERY FIRST prints I’ve pulled from the press (and that my skill in handling the blocks, sheets, inks, brushes, drawers, etc. can only improve with practice), these first attempts make me feel optimistic! My only regrets at the moment are that I’m no longer young, strong, and/or slender– I’ll have to work on those a bit (LOL)

Mike

– Mike

So how many individual colors can be printed (not considering gradations or variations in color on any single block)? Let’s see:

• 1 blank paper
• 3 yellows
• 5 reds
• 15 red-yellows
• 4 blues
• 12 blue-yellows
• 20 blue-reds
• 60 blue-reds-yellows
• ===
• 120 different colors at most from the 12-reduction printings of 3 blocks
• (4096 different colors at most from 12 different blocks not reduced)

self-portrait, January 15, 2004, 15 x 10 inches, woodblock print - 3 block 12-state reduction, Prussian Blue, Primary Red, Transparent Yellow on Yamaguchi hosho , 44 sheets printed

self-portrait, July, 2000, 11 x 8.5 inches, watercolors on paper

state 3 (pale red, yellow, blue), and state 2 (pale red and yellow)

This was my first experiment with graphite. I bought a one pound bag from Daniel Smith for about $10. Used about a teaspoon to produce these fifty-two 11″ x 8″ sheets (later trimmed to 10″ x 7.5″). Mixed the dry graphite into alcohol, then mixed that into rice paste and printed as usual. Not surprisingly, these little woodblock prints have the character and ‘feel’ of little pencil drawings. The figure is approximately 3.5″ tall. Very tiny!

"Jessica Turning", October 21, 2003, woodblock print, 11 state reduction, graphite on Yamaguchi Hosho paper approximately 10" x 7.5" (chuban)

the 11 states of the print - one block reduced by re-carving and re-printing 11 times.

detail of figure

I was unhappy with the reds in the face and arm of my previous print. I had wanted those to be very intense, vibrating against the blues of the robe. But the color never vibrated and I had a lot of trouble developing the intensity I’d desired. 

Combing Hair, 2003, chuban 10 x 7.5 inches, Moku-Hanga aka-e (red picture) color woodcut

Combing Hair, 2003, chuban 10 x 7.5 inches, Moku-Hanga aka-e (red picture) color woodcut with metallic ground over sumi

The current print, “Combing Hair” is another attempt to develop some vibrant color and I feel it is more successful. Instead of shades gray (sumi) played against shades of a single color, I used two different reds, quinacridone red (rather pinkish) and quinacridone magenta (similar in color to Alizarin Crimson). There were eight block states of red and seven of gray which I printed progressing from palest to deepest shades. The palest reds were printed with the quinacridone red, and from block five I added quinacridone magenta in increasing proportion until block eight was pure quinacridone magenta. I selected the quinacridones because I feel they have great transparency and I didn’t want the light grays I’d printed early on to be obscured by the deepest reds I printed later. This worked very well ­ the dark tones in the shaded parts of the throat, for example, are from very pale grays printed underneath six to eight red printings.

The blocks were 3 / 4 ” basswood. The paper is #23 New Hosho from the Baren Mall. This is a fairly thick and soft paper which really was not strong enough to stand up to the fourteen to sixteen printings to which I subjected it (the Yamaguchi Hosho holds up much better to many overlapped printings). After only four to six printings, this New Hosho paper showed a marked tendency to fall apart and long fibers pulled from the printed surface. For embossing or for printing less than five or six overlapped areas though, this is a beautiful and reasonably priced paper, I think. It has a great “hand”, especially when wet! Wonderful to feel! Luxurious!

The black background is sumi printed on top of a number of layers of pale red and pale gray which made a silvery gray you can still see beneath the ear and around the edges of the hair. Then three printings of pure sumi were made in order to produce as intense a black background as possible.

I experimented with a number of the sheets, applying a mica background to one (silver gray and sparkly), a deep red powder pigment (ooooh!), and a lustrous metallic gold (antique bronze) powder which really gives an Italian Renaissance feel to the print. But the most striking examples are the majority — those with the deep black background as illustrated above.

This is an example of the prints I produced for BarenForum‘s Exchange #14(a). It is a Japanese technique wood block print, oban size (about 15 inches high) on hand made, unsized gampi paper.

Blue Shoes, Aug 2002, 15 x 10 inches, reduction in 23 states of three blocks on Yamaguchi hosho paper, 50 sheets printed

This is a reduction print, printed by hand using Traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques and materials (except, of course for the reduction part). Traditionally, each of the 19 blocks for this print would have been carved by hand from separate pieces of wood. But in order to save time and material and increase risk, I carved only three blocks — one for the pinks, one for the blues, and one for the grays. So each of the 52 sheets of paper was printed at least 19 times (not all papers received the wood grain).

For the various shades of blue and pink and gray which make up the print, I’d carve each block a bit, print each sheet, carve each block a bit more, print each sheet again a little darker, etc, etc, etc.

"The Fisherman and his Wife", 1996, 15 x 10 inches, polychrome woodblock print from 5 blocks.

the 'plan' for the print, my original drawing in graphite with colored pencil and kento registration marked.

In 2008, I printed an edition of 31 for Baren Forum exchange #35 -- same blocks, but maybe my technique has improved over a dozen years -- at least I'm FASTER now!

For the 2008 printing (see image above), I wrote the following for the Baren Forum colophon:

• moku-hanga (traditional Japanese woodblock print)
• Titanium white (dry pigment in rice paste)
• Benzimidazo H2G Yellow (pigment suspension)
• Cadmium Yellow medium(dry pigment in rice paste)
• Pyrole Red (pigment suspension)
• Prussian Blue (pigment suspension)
• Yasutomo Sumi (carbon black)
• Printed on Iwano Ichibei (Japanese Living National Treasure of papermaking) hosho using hon-baren in fifteen impressions over five blocks:
• Luan — horizontal grain
• Luan — vertical grain (glued to other side)
• Birch
• Birch (other side)
• Shina ply (key block)

The blocks were carved in June 1996 in parody of Hiroshige’s 100 Views of Edo (mimicking point of view and red/yellow/blue palette, with black cartoony outlines.  I’d never really editioned these blocks and hadn’t gotten great prints from them, either – but I like the design and it fit the fairy tale theme, so I improved the carving to reduce blotching and have reprinted the original color scheme but with now greater facility in the medium.  These are more or less my original intention actually – it’s only taken a dozen years!

In 1976-77 I was living and working in Manhattan with my then wife, a ‘fabulous’ red-head.  So this is me, my ex-wife, and my libido in New York…

The Fisherman and His Wife

Once upon a time a simple fisherman and his wife lived by the sea in a filthy little hovel.  Every day, the fisherman would row out in his little boat and cast his nets.  Sometimes he was lucky with the fishing and sometimes he was not.

One day, the fisherman pulled in his net to discover an enormous fish struggling inside.  As the fisherman tried to get it in the boat, the fish began to plead with him, begging to be released back into the sea.  The fisherman was very surprised that any fish could speak and he felt pity for the fish and released it and the fish quickly swam away.  As he rowed back to shore with nothing to show for his day’s work, he looked forward to telling his wife about that unusual fish.

When heard about the talking fish, the fisherman’s wife became angry and abusive.  “Here we are, not even a crust of bread to eat much less any fish, you worthless idiot of a husband! That fish was magic!  You should have made it grant you a wish in return for letting it go!  Now you get back in your boat and find that fish and tell it we want a nice clean little cottage instead of this filthy hovel, and don’t come back until it’s done!” she screamed at him.

“But it’s cold and it’s night and I won’t be able to find the fish,” said the fisherman.

“GO!” said the wife.  And there was no changing her mind, nor shutting her up, so he went, even though it was the middle of the night and he’d had no sleep and nothing to eat for several days.

As he rowed, it became dark and very windy and the sea was rolling quite large and this frightened the fisherman, but his wife frightened him even more, so he called out, “Fishy, fishy, in the sea, won’t you grant a wish for me?”

And after a while the fish popped his head out of the waves and said, “What is your wish, then?”

And the little fisherman was so surprised he almost fell right out of the boat!  But after stuttering and stammering for a while, he was able to explain that his wife insisted that the fish give them a nice cottage to live in so their life needn’t be so hard.  And the fish said, “Go home, fisherman, your wife already has what she wants.”

So the fisherman rowed home and right where their filthy hovel had been now stood a beautiful little cottage, freshly white-washed, with shutters and smoke coming out of it’s brick chimney, and inside was a wonderful dinner on the table and his wife wearing some new clothes.  And she seemed satisfied for a while.

But one day the wife said, “Husband — that fish could have done anything we wanted, and all he gave in return for his life was this tiny little cottage. Now you get back out there and find that fish and you tell him…”

There was no talking her out of it, so the poor fisherman finally got back into his boat and rowed out to sea calling, “Fishy, fishy, in the sea, won’t you grant a wish for me?”

And after a time the fish poked his head out of the water and said, “Well, what is your wish now?”

And the fisherman stammeringly explained that his wife wanted to be a queen and live in a castle and have servants and guards and on and on.  And the fish looked very stern, but he said, “Go home.  Your wife already has what she desires.”

And when the fisherman got to shore, in place of the little cottage there was a big castle with turrets and flags and soldiers on horseback riding back and forth bugling.  When he tried to enter, two guards with halberds barred his way and wouldn’t let him in until his wife, the queen of the castle, finally ordered them to let him come in.  She looked very royal in her fancy velvet clothes with gold embroidery and jeweled crown and scepter and the fisherman was afraid even to look at her.  So he tried very hard to make himself small and beneath her royal notice and he hoped that she would now be content.

But it wasn’t long before she sent the guards to find him and bring him before her.  And when he was made to kneel down, she commanded him to row back out to sea and she gave him precise instructions.

As the little fisherman rowed out in his little boat, the skies grew very dark and the wind howled and lightning flashed all around and the waves were so huge they threatened to overturn the boat at any moment.  But he called out anyway, “Fishy, fishy, in the sea, won’t you grant a wish for me?”

And after a while the fish popped his head out of the waves and said quite angrily, “Well, fisherman, what do you want this time?”

And the little fisherman was so frightened he could barely speak at all, but he managed to explain that his wife was no longer satisfied just being queen.  Now she wanted to be ruler of the universe and lord of creation.  And at this, so much lightening crackled all around that the little fisherman was truly in fear for his life.

But the fish just blinked once and said, “Go home, fisherman, your wife has what she deserves.”

And the little fisherman rowed back to shore and instead of the huge castle, there was a filthy little falling-down hovel and his wife standing outside dressed in her old rags.  And the old couple struggled to survive there for the rest of their days.