Manaia woodblock - WiP

 

I'm working on a simple MDF woodcut. The image area is roughly A6.

It'a manaia motif.

There are a couple or three colour blocks still to come, though I have only the vaguest idea at this stage what I'm going to do with it. Doubtless something will happen.

This is a watercolour colour test to be going on with.
It may or may not end up having any relation to this.

---

Some test prints, plus the colour sketch at far left. I'm happy enough with the foreground orange, but the background green needs a bit more blue in it, and be more transparent to let the white of the paper glow through.

Here I've experimented with a gradient across the top of the background colour (image on the right). I like it I think, even though the photo is 100% arse-drool. Worth pursuing.

This blue gradient is better than the raw sienna I think; it's cleaner and richer, and gives the background the depth that it needs.

Spooooooon!

 What have I been up to? I've been filing and sanding and polishing a teaspoon.

This is not because I'm awfully anally particular about the implements I use to stir my coffee. It's because a stainless steel teaspoon, all nicely rounded off and polished, is a very useful tool for hand-printing relief prints.

The bowl of the spoon is used for rubbing down larger areas, and the rounded end of the handle is useful for picking out detail areas.

I've slightly re-curved the handle to make it more useful in this respect, and I've also engraved my name on to it so that no bugger can accidentally claim it as theirs.

Bird Woodcut

 

Here's a quickie woodcut I did this afternoon on a bit of 3mm marine ply I had lying around.

It's about 120 x 155mm, printed on 45gsm layout paper — not quite tracing paper, but nearly.

The texture of the wood grain shows quite nicely I think.

Diamond Hones

 

I bought myself some diamond hones via AliExpress, and 3d-printed some double-sided holders for them.

They are about 20x150mm, on 1mm steel sheets.

I got 320, 600, 800, 1200 and 2000 grits.

The 320 holder (in the clips under the lid) is empty on the other side; I'll probably glue a strip of leather in that socket for use as a strop.

Pfeil Gouge Tray

 

On an extended trip away recently, it came to me that it would have been nice to be able to do a bit of block cutting. My turntable gouge rack, though convenient for the benchtop, isn't the sort of thing I can just slip into a bag and carry away. So I set to work in Blender and designed this little flat(ish) tray, and after a few test prints of an individual cavity, printed the whole array on my Ender 3. It comes out at 160 x 200 mm.

I'll make a shallow lidded plywood box for protection, and I'll probably just glue the tray in the bottom of it.

I've included cavities for 10 x 5 x 2 mm magnets to hold the gouges in place (you can see them in the plastic box at the top of the photo) but for added security I'll include a foam bar down the middle of the lid that will press down on the blades of the gouges when the lid is in place. The combination of the two, the magnets and the foam, should hold everything firmly in place.

2023-10-17

I whipped up a little box from plywood and glued the 3d-printed tray in place. The magnets hold the gouges pretty firmly, but nevertheless I think I'll include a foam pad in the lid to hold everything down.

Pfeill Modification

 

This is a Pfeill lino or woodcut gouge, made in Switzerland. They are excellent chisels, good steel, good ergonomics, and well made. There are cheaper ones available for sure, but with this sort of tool you tend to get what you pay for.

This specific one is a #11 sweep or veiner; it's a tiny U-gouge that creates a very regular fine line. It's not impossible to modulate the line, but there's not much scope for variation in the line it creates.

It's held with the mushroom-shaped handle against the heel of the palm, with the fingers wrapped around it and the index finger right out near the tip for accuracy of steering.

The flat on the bottom, as well as keeping the tool from rolling around all over your workbench, provides a place for the last two fingers to rest. It's a comfortable grip, developed over centuries, and it's my favourite style of grip for block cutting.

My only issue with it is that the hard edge of the mushroom can start to dig into my little finger if I'm using the tool for long stretches.

Fortunately, the fix is very easy indeed.

I just knock off the corner that my finger rests on by scraping and sanding it with very fine sandpaper. Not a lot of material needs to be removed, just enough to get rid of the hard corner on that side.

The tool handles are made of pear wood I think, and they work very easily.

 

Ouroboros Centipede

This is a state proof of a little woodcut, only 60x120 mm, cut into a fragment of MDF.

I was originally planning to cut away the background, but now, having seen it sitting in its black block, I'm not so sure about that.

The Tale of Tuan Mac Cairill

 I've shown these before, but I thought I'd get them all into one place. They're a series of illustrations for the Tale of Tuan Mac Cairill, a very ancient Irish origin story about the coming of the first men to Ireland. Tuan does a lot of transforming into animals.

Plywood Block

 

I thought I would give an ordinary old scrap of 18mm pine plywood a go as a printing block. Results were mixed.

Shown here are scans of the block itself (left) and a print taken from it (right). The print has been reversed horizontally so that it matches the image on the block.

You can see dark bands running from top to bottom of the block; these are from the growth rings in the timber the plywood was made from.

The density of the wood varies quite markedly between summer and winter growth, and that causes problems when cutting from one to the other, as the gouge can unexpectedly dive deeper into the surface, or skip up out of the wood.

Also, the variable density creates variable absorbency when the ink is rolled on to the block, and it swells unevenly across its surface. The effect is miniscule, invisible to the naked eye, but you can see the results in the right-hand side of print. I was using quite a hard brayer to roll on the ink, so it was quite unforgiving of any hollows. The printing issues are exacerbated by the uneven cutting caused by the density variations too.

Apart from the issues created by the growth rings, actually cutting the pine plywood was really quite easy. It was definitely more pleasant than cutting MDF, as there was no dust, and my gouges stayed sharper for longer. For simple prints without any complex line work, I think it would probably be fine. However, for anything other than that, plywood faced with a more homogenous, fine-grained timber would be much better — cherry, for example, or pear.

New Woodcut, But Old

 

I started this woodcut quite some time ago, and the key block has been sitting around all that time (since 2017). Now I've also cut a bunch of colour blocks, and I don't think I'll be doing any more cutting, but I have to do some more playing around with the colours because these ones are pretty shite and I'm getting a little bit disheartened.

<< This is the original ballpoint pen drawing I did even longer ago, in 2012 I think.

Warm colour scheme

And this (right) is the latest colour scheme, which I like a lot better than the earlier one.

It needs a certain something, but I haven't quite figured out what.

Topical Woodblock Print

 

Colour mock-up
— will probably change a bit

Let's start from the end. This is the completed woodcut in three colours (four if you count the seal stamp). It was printed in "Flint" water-based relief inks on a registration stage, using one of my glass-bead barens.

Process

The design is drawn on to 3mm MDF in Indian ink. That orangy-yellow is just there to make it easy for me to see where I have and haven't cut the MDF away.

MDF has its pluses and minuses as a woodcut medium. It has no grain, and it's easy to cut with sharp tools. It's like very hard lino in that respect, except that you can manage finer detail than you can in lino. On the other hand, it's a bit fibrous and fragile, and it's very easy for small details to be torn away by the pressure of the gouge. Also, the silica in it is pretty hard on edges, and you need to be sharpening a lot more than you would with proper wood or lino.

The wooden handled gouges in the stand (to the right) are all very cheap, and the steel is, frankly, not great. The blue ones in the foreground I got when I was at polytech; they were more expensive, though not desperately so — I think a set cost about thirty bucks — and their steel is much better, taking and keeping a much better edge.

Here's the first test print, to see if or where any more cutting needs to be done. Overall, I'm reasonably happy with it so far.

This is not, I should note, a good print, and it's intended solely for informative purposes. It hasn't been inked up evenly, and it should have more ink on it, but inking up will get more consistent as the old ink seals the rather absorbent surface of the MDF.

Once the key block — the main detail block, usually containing all or most of the outlines — is done, the colour blocks are created by means of an offset printing process.

The blocks are all placed in exactly the same position, kept in place by the black cardboard tabs you can see surrounding it, and the key block is printed on to (in this case) a piece of clear plastic, also locked into position with masking tape. Acetate is better, as it takes the ink better and is more dimensionally stable. Paper is usable, but because it is absorbent it makes the transfer on to the other blocks less reliable.

Once the plastic is printed, key block is removed, and another block is placed into the printing position. The plastic, with its printed image, is lowered on to the new block and the ink rubbed on to its surface. I use a rubber brayer for this.

The process is repeated as many times as is necessary, and now I have a reference image on the colour blocks, exactly the same as the key block, that I can use to exactly register the cutting for each new colour.

I'll do as many blocks as I think I'll need, plus one or two more in case of fuck-ups.

In this case, I'm expecting to want two colours in addition to the key block, and I've done three colour blocks. 

Dunes — woodblock

Woodcut, approx. 340 x 110 mm, oil-based inks

I found this little woodcut I did years and years ago at Hagley, when I was doing the prep course for entry into CPIT's design degree course.

It's a simple thing, but mine own. I quite like it, though I think the colours could do with a bit of refinement.

Registration and Separations

 I've figured out a way of getting properly registered colour separations (and, eventually, prints).

I've built a frame on a piece of MDF which closely surrounds the block on three sides. Outside that frame are registration tabs to set the paper into, so the paper and block are always in exactly the same place, relative to each other. All the blocks are precisely the same size, so it works for all of them.

The frame around the block is the same thickness as the MDF I've cut the block from, which means that there's a support for the baren to run on to — that helps to keep it out of the voids, and it also means that it's less likely to shift the block by pressing against an outside edge. There's a floating piece, not attached, that I put across the right-hand edge after the block is in place for the same purpose.

The colour block guide prints are created by an offset printing process. The key block (the one in the frame in this photo) is printed on to a sheet of mylar, registered in the paper registration tabs. Then it and the key block are removed, one of the colour blocks put into the frame, and the mylar replaced against the registration tabs, and rubbed down against the fresh block with a rubber brayer (roller). That transfers a reversed image of the key block in perfect registration, and I can use that image to guide me in cutting the colour block.

I've put up a cheap portable washing line in my workshop that I can use for drying prints. These ones are on A3 sheets, and I figure I could get about 30 up there before they started to interfere with my printing area. I'm unlikely to be doing any large runs, so that should be plenty.

The Proof Is Out There

The block

The first proof

I finished cutting the key block.

I was originally planning to cut away the blank background areas completely, to eliminate the chance of any accidental ink contamination, but then I realised that would make registration placement quite difficult. So instead, I carved them away quite deeply so that the brayer (ink roller) doesn't touch them. I'll probably also give them a couple of coats of gloss varnish, so that if I do get ink in those areas I can just wipe it away.

The first proof (right) was pretty successful. There are a couple of areas that could do with a bit of extra cutting, but overall I'm fairly happy with it.

I can see that I'm going to have to be quite careful with the baren at the ends of the block — you can see a faint patch at bottom right where I skipped over it a bit.

Next up, I shall build a registration frame and start working out the colour blocks.

Block Cutting

I'm cutting my first block in quite some considerable time, and my hands and neck are cramping up something awful. This is the key block; I'm thinking the finished print will be in three or maybe four colours, so of course blocks will have to be carved for each of them as well.

I'm using MDF, which isn't the best material in the world for block making, but it has some advantages. It's cheap and easily available, and it has no grain, which makes carving it a lot more like linocut than woodcut — your knife or gouge isn't going to be deflected by an unexpectedly hard and twisty bit of grain. However, it's rather fibrous, and if your tools aren't scalpel-sharp it tends to tear. It's pretty hard on tool edges too, so you need to be sharpening fairly often.

The image is one that I drew a few years ago, in ball-point pen.

I did a solvent transfer of a laser print of it on to the MDF, and then over-drew it with brush and Indian ink — I find that a brush drawing works quite well as a cutting guide, as I can't get too finicky about detail that I'd never be able to cut. For an image like this, the brush line changes the character of the image somewhat, but I like that; there seems little point to me in trying to force one medium into replicating another.

The small print you see in the main image is just a quickie I took early on in the cutting to see how the cutting will reproduce. That ink should be red, but it's been sitting in its tube so long that it's separated out, and despite all the kneading and massaging of the tube I could do, it stubbornly persists in squirting out mainly its chrome yellow base. I did the test print in a colour other than black because I wanted to still be able to see my ink lines afterwards.

Baren Test

 I gave my glass-bead baren its first test outing today. I used water-soluble Flint relief printing ink, applied to a roughly 120mm square MDF block with a rubber brayer.

This one is one very thin, smooth note paper, and it was pretty easy to get a fairly clean, sharp impression. I need to pay close attention to keeping the paper in place though; the first one I did moved about a bit under the rotational thrust of the baren, but it's not really difficult to keep it still if I pay attention.

This one is on fairly heavy printmaking paper — I don't know the manufacturer — about 280-300 gsm, I'd guess.

The impression is not as clean as on the thinner, smoother paper, which is not unexpected, but it's not too bad. It's worst at the bottom of the print, which I think is because I was a bit uneven in my rubbing pressure.




What I've learned from this very brief test is that the glass beads work very well as a baren surface, moving smoothly and easily over the paper surface, and it's easy to get a good amount of pressure without having to grunt and strain. However, I think it would work better with more, smaller beads, more closely spaced, so I'll see what I can find and make a second one.