Print Making 1- The woodblock experience

Printmaking starts at 11 on Tuesdays and Thursdays after Tai chi.  Tai Chi is extremely exhausting.  So when I get to printmaking, I am ready for a nap.  I am certainly not ready for frustration.  Our first project was the woodblock print.  We were instructed to find a picture of an elderly person and we drew from the reference photo.  Next the drawing was transferred to the block using winter green oil.  The step to follow was the carving of the image.  After that we did "working proofs".  We tweaked the image with our carving tools and proceeded to make "artist's proofs".

I chose an image of an elderly third world woman.  This photo is right before I started carving out her features- I had just removed the background.

This is my first artist proof- I thought I needed to fix and improve her.

The second run of prints on the fixed and improved image was not improved at all in actuality.  I applied the ink to thickly and she actually lost definition. Below the fixed and improved is on the left side of your screen.

This was the set of fixed and improved(not), just after printing.  

 Other people's work:

 This is where you scrape out some ink.  The clean- up is a lot of work..right here I am beginning to clean up.  When you role the tool in the ink it is supposed to make a certain squishy sticky sound.  You can tell by the sound if you have too much ink on it.  We cleaned everything with a soy-based oil cleaner.  We also rolled the roller on an old phone book.  The palette on the right is filled up with waste ink.

This is the press.  It is important not to leave the bed centered under the press part or it will make dents in the wood supports.  If there are dents in the wood supports it will cause the  print to not be even.  We worked with rice paper for this project. We also used newsprint over the top of the print during the printing part.

I said while I was working on her, "If I get an 80 on this I will be happy" .  Grades are not my main motivator, but....anyway- my professor gave me an 82.  I thought that was good, especially since the class average was in the seventies.  We submitted 5 final prints and two artist's proofs.  I ran a whole extra printing, which was unnecessary.