saint_monkey

Sorry ... This last entry in the "Teapot Print" has been a long time coming, I know. But I needed to have a minute to sit down and type it up.

First, if you want to brush up, the prior installments are here...

Part One (Picking the image)
Part Two (Transferring the Image to the Woodblock)
Part Three (Knives and Carving.)

So, apologies if anyone has been sitting around with a carved block for months, waiting to learn how to print it.



( So here we go... )

I started this journal, long ago, to document some of my printmaking processes. As time has progressed, I've done almost none of that.

But I'm about to make a print, and I figure now is as good a time as any.

I've signed up for an exchange that requires ten prints of any topic, roughly relating to winter. I've sat around and sketched for a few weeks and contemplated various ideas, all of which have been united by really sucking.

So when in desperate times, take a picture of something that you like and print that.



A picture of a green ceramic teapot, a handmade cup, and a purple tablecloth. This has the added advantage of making me think of a warm cup of tea, and that is a good winter thing.

This would actually make a pretty good color print, but I'm going to start by planning this as a black and white print. Color is a lot more labor, you see, and this print is essentially going to be given away, and since my move, I have almost no wood. (This block will be placed on the back of a prior block.) So black and white it is.

Now, if I didn't have Photoshop, the next bit would be to sketch out the image on paper, thinking about the areas that I want to stay dark, and the areas that I want to be light. There would probably be two or three sketches to work out the look of the thing before moving it onto wood. But I want to capture some of the complex pattern of the rug, and I want to make that process as easy for myself as possible, and since I do have a rusty old copy of Photoshop...

I'll flip the image horizontally, so that I can see what it will be like on the block, then discard color info, and then posterize the thing to say, level 2 or three, and then bump up the contrast so that I'm getting close to two colors.



This gives me a good idea of how the print will look. (Don't worry, the finished print won't be so busy. I'm a professional, trust me. Besides, if you live in the USA, your tax dollars paid for four years worth of lessons from a bon-e-fi-de master to augment my natural skills.)

Now the next bit will be to get this off of the computer and onto a block. I'll save that for later, but I'll give you a glimpse... There are two ways to proceed. I can draw it on, or I can transfer the design... More on that in a bit.