The Heritage Series: Number 2

The second subject in the Heritage Series (prints made using vintage and rescued or found wood) is from a local historic ranch. Again, the off-cuts came from my wood-working neighbour who had salvaged lumber from decades-old cattle feeders that were being replaced with modern metal structures. Years of exposure to the weather had left the wood blackened with age and deeply abraded. (The white residue on the left-hand blocks is printing ink.)

The scruffy wood, when cut, revealed a startling cinnamon-hued interior. The photo above doesn't do justice to how that planed and sanded wood (the edge of the right-hand sample) glows when it's been oiled and rubbed to a smooth finish. When I tried to re-create this gorgeous colour, I ended up with prints that didn’t look all that different from the race track fencing prints.

My intention is to produce a distinct look for each subject in the series – which has proven a challenge since, frankly, one piece of old wood can pretty much look like any other piece of old wood! My solution was to mimic the colours of the rough exterior and stick with a simple palette of greys and black with an occasional undertone of red or blue.

Here's a tip -- if you're inking up roughly textured wood, don't use your good brayers! I permanently indented this Speedball one. It wasn't expensive but it worked well and I feel badly for damaging it. The 4-inch foam rollers you pick up at any dollar store actually work better on deeply grained wood like this. They lay down a more consistent layer of ink on the uneven surface.

I love how the layers of ink and multiple passes through the press bring out the texture of the old wood. It's not just a visual effect -- if you run a finger over the print you can feel the deep embossing. The power of the press pushes the soft printmaking paper down into the grain and knots in a way you could never achieve by hand.

I'm working on taking better photos but hope, below, you can see the red undertones (top card) and the cooler blue tones (bottom card). 

In the next post my plan is to show a few of the many concertina (or accordion) books I've made over this past year and the method that works for me to get crisp, even folds.

A Bunch of Squares!

Several years ago I got a paper-cutter for Christmas and the sudden ability to cut paper easily and accurately was galvanizing. I haven’t been able to stop! There’s something both soothing and energizing about the crisp zip of the knife slicing through the paper. 

I often use the cutter’s protective metal 1.25-inch edging as a guide to chop a multitude of perfect little squares.

Pretty much anything provides fodder for the mill – discarded prints, old book pages, sheet music, greeting cards, hand-written letters, scrapbooking paper, the patterned inside of security envelopes – and then comes the fun of arranging the squares in a grid (usually three by three) until a composition “clicks”.

Sometimes, I vary the grid, like in the garden-themed cards below. (Apologies for the glare -- I forgot to photograph them before I packaged them.) The floral bits were printed with rubber stamps I'd carved.

A gift packet of beautiful origami papers inspired a happy afternoon of chopping and composing. For sticking down, I often use a UHU glue stick. You need a fairly "dry" glue to prevent wrinkling. However, for the garden cards, the papers were layered over a printed ink background. (You can spot the colour in the grid.) I discovered, after a while, the collaged papers would pop off. Think it had something to do with the oily inked background resisting the glue. It didn't always happen -- but often enough to be a problem. Yes! Paste proved a good substitute. It's a thick spreadable glue that must have a low moisture content -- it dries flat and doesn't wrinkle. If you find the paste too thick it can be thinned with something like Golden Glazing Liquid (a suggestion in Crystal Neubauer's book The Art of Expressive Collage) or Golden Open Acrylic Medium.

For a time I would chop up the previous year’s Christmas and birthday cards I'd received and make 3x3-inch gift enclosures. It was a workout for my brain to re-arrange the squares and come up with a good design. I also played with combining the graphic shapes of commercial paper punches with bits of ephemera. 

Food packaging also offered great graphics and I loved working with the text.

A stack of old Geographic magazines jumpstarted the gift enclosures below. I gave away the magazines and kept their brown paper wrappers!

I like working with strips of paper, too, trying to pair disparate patterns that somehow end up working together, creating a sort of visual “story”.

Here I'm auditioning pairs, looking for the magic "ah-ha"!

But I always come back to squares.

I'm between printmaking projects at the moment and, like many, feeling distracted by COVID-19 and the likelihood of a long and isolating winter ahead. Playing around with these little squares lifts my spirits and helps keep me in the studio and the ideas percolating.

Drawing with an Eyedropper!

This spring, when we were all self-isolating, I signed up for British artist Tara Leaver's Free Up Your Art. Not sure if it still is but, at the time, the week-long course was offered for free. Just want to take a moment here to thank artists who share their techniques and experience so generously – it’s a marvel to see their inspiring work and pick up tips and advice with a click of a mouse. (Must admit, I still use a computer mouse and one with a cord, no less!) 

Tara is a painter, not a printmaker, and her style is very different from mine but I found her approach so enviable. It’s loose and spontaneous and I want to bring more of that to my own work. One of the lessons during the week was to draw quickly and not overthink things (above). Another was to draw with a long stick. I had a box of Conte (drawing crayons made with a mix of graphite and clay) I’d never used. I attached a crayon to a tough stalk from the garden, put my sketchbook on the floor (I used a page where I’d already glued dress-making pattern tissue) and attempted to draw some tulips.

Very little control but so much fun! And even more fun when I discovered smudging to create depth and shadow.

A side benefit from taking the course was a push to actually try out art supplies I’d bought and never used. One of those supplies was an inexpensive bottle of sumi ink (a very black ink made from soot and used in traditional Japanese calligraphy). After taking the free course I signed up for a month’s access to Tara’s other courses and, smitten with her drawing with an eyedropper (think Tara would call it a pipette), I gave it a try myself. 

The tags shown in the last post gave way to filling some small concertina (or accordion) books I’d folded and had on hand. A few of them were left over from attempting a bit of rust printing where you take metal items (I used old washers and other flat bits and bobs I had in the studio) and sandwich them in damp printmaking paper. Nothing much happened for me other than some brownish discolouration here and there and I didn’t pursue the rust printing – although I’ve seen some fascinating results on the internet.

In the next photo there’s a close-up of the rust marks.

Here's a short video of another concertina.

And then I tried going larger, which was actually easier to do. These are 5x7-inches.

 

I like to add a small image to the back of the cards. And sometimes I mat and frame them.

I’m going to keep going with ink and the eyedropper with plans to eventually turn some of the drawings into linocuts.

Tags, tags, tags!

When I cut down the 5x7-inch Strathmore card blanks to 5x5-inches for my square notecards I’m left with a lovely two-inch strip that’s the perfect size for a gift tag.

You can fold the strip in half and add slivers of chopped-up “failed” prints. I find it fun and freeing to look for bits of interesting composition in the larger image. Or, if it’s a really sad-looking print, chop it up willy-nilly and see what you get! The weight of the folded strip gives the tag some “heft” and an elegant presentation. 

Usually, though, I cut the strips in half along the fold line and make two tags. Looking ahead to the coming gift-giving season, these Christmas tags were made with hand-cut rubber stamps.

 

Cutting the 5x7-inch blanks down for 4x6-inch cards yielded off-cuts for these skinny tags. I set the words using an alphabet debossing set. The individual letters were tapped on an ink pad and then struck with a hammer. 

Ready access to stacks of tag-size off-cuts is easy encouragement to play around with an idea, work in a series and try out new techniques. I’ve been wanting to develop a looser drawing style with stronger lines and had such a good time with these next tags. I gathered some fading plants from the flower beds and sketched them using sumi ink and an eyedropper. I was pleased at how cooperative the ink flow was – I had more control than I’d expected. At the same time, there were surprises – bloops and blops to work around.

I’ll show you what these sumi ink tags led to in the next post. (Apologies for the glare from my studio lighting.)