Making Lemonade Out of Failed Woodcuts

A few less-than-ideal proofs

I'm discovering that you can accumulate A LOT of "failed" woodcut prints. There are smudges, bare spots, prints where the register was off, areas where I either over-inked or under-inked the block, or prints that I discovered later had random bits of detritus accidentally adhere themselves to the print and are now an unwelcome part of the artwork. (For a good overview of the most common problems in block printing and how to fix them, check here). My pile of rejects is towering over my pile of acceptable prints, and it is rather disheartening.

As I delve deeper into the world of relief printmaking, I've been making a general pest of myself with other printmakers, asking all sorts of questions and soliciting advice. Thankfully they all seem to be a very generous and patient bunch. The other week I was having an email conversation with the wonderful and talented printmaker Belinda Del Pesco about a totally unrelated issue when she happened to mention using colored media on the reject prints. My brain packed that little nugget away, but it didn't take long for it to come in handy.

One of the most challenging pieces I'm working on is a woodcut of a tree in winter. I love the image, but have been having the hardest time getting it to print the way I want. Part of the problem is that I live in a very dry climate. (I'll be posting about the problems of and solutions for printmaking in a dry climate sometime soon) The wood just soaks up any ink I put on it. The other day I was looking at all the sad proofs of the tree print in my studio and Belinda's comment popped into my brain again. I took a proof off the pile, reached for my watercolors that just happened to be sitting close by, and...

Tree in Winter
5.5x5 inches, woodcut with watercolor

In some ways, I actually like this better than my intended vision for the woodcut. The color seems to bring out the texture in the tree bark and the cold wintry feel of the night. Suddenly that pile of reject prints looks more like a pile of artistic gold!

Obviously a huge thanks to Belinda Del Pesco for making this blog post possible. Belinda has a time lapse video on using watercolor on a woodcut print. Check out her other printmaking videos on her YouTube channel here.

Printmaking Exhibit From Last Summer

Stock Market
Ted Davies, 1959
Woodcut with gold leaf

With the Thanksgiving holiday and family obligations, I haven't had much time to paint lately, so thought I'd share some images from Breaking Ground: Printmaking in the US 1940-1960, an exhibit I saw at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last summer.

This first piece is a woodblock print by Ted Davies (1928-1993).  I don't have the exact dimensions of the print, but it was a good 3 ft. wide. What appears to be tan ink in the photos of this piece is actually gold leaf.

Stock Market detail from lower right hand corner

The details in the piece really blew me away. Each person is unique and doing their own thing. Look at the swags on the window drapes in the detail below.

Stock Market detail from upper left hand corner

Next up is The Hydrogen Man by Leonard Baskin (1922-2000).

The Hydrogen Man
Leonard Baskin, 1954
Woodcut

According to the label for this piece at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "...Baskin made this life-sized print in response to the US testing of the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands." It's a pretty powerful image, gruesome yet captivating. My photo doesn't do it justice and doesn't convey the size of the piece.

Detail from The Hydrogen Man

The intricate maze of veins must've taken a lot of patience and a very steady hand to carve out of wood.

Monoprint
Harry Bertoia, c. 1942-43
Color relief monoprint

I really liked this monoprint by designer and artist Harry Bertoia. Unfortunately the label for the piece didn't offer any information about it. A quick google-search didn't produce any further insight into this particular piece, but the website for the Harry Bertoia Foundation talks about how in 1943 Mr. Bertoia sent around 100 monoprints to the curator Hilla Rebay at the Guggenheim (then known as the Museum of Non-Objective Art) for a critique. Much to his surprise, she wanted to buy the entire collection for the museum! I can see why.

I took photos of twelve of the pieces in this show, but no matter how hard I tried, many of them ended up with harsh reflections in the glass from the gallery lighting, so they aren't worth showing here. It was really quite an inspirational show, and we caught it just a week before it closed. Of course the Philadelphia Museum of Art regularly has special exhibits of famous artists and artwork, but they also have these smaller shows of works on paper which gives the visitor who is willing to explore the museum a little deeper a real treat with the added bonus of not needing an extra ticket or having to try to view artwork in a crowd. Truth be told, they are my favorite exhibits.

Blackbird Woodcut

I may have mentioned in passing that aside from oil painting I'm crazy about printmaking, specifically woodblock printing. I've tried linocut printing (carving an image out of a block of linoleum) but there's something about working with wood that I really love. I usually work with white pine, since it is a soft wood and easy to carve. Over the last couple of months I've been working on a woodcut of a blackbird in reeds.

The inspiration

During spring migration, male yellow-headed blackbirds congregate in huge numbers at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah, just north of Salt Lake City. On our annual trip to the Refuge, we see hundreds of them at a time and this year the image of them in the reeds really struck me and ideas for a painting began to form.

While I was sketching studies and thumbnails for a painting it occurred to me that the scene would also make a great woodcut image, so I changed gears and began working on a print.

The bird's face reminded me too much of the bald eagle in The Muppets.

At first my plan was to use just one block of wood and black ink, however I was not happy with the bird's face after seeing the first proof. The only way to change the face was to completely carve it away and create a second block with a new face carved into it which would print over the first block. Since I was going to the trouble of carving a second block, I decided to change a few other things, too. Can you spot what I changed?

The new face

I printed the original block of wood with gray ink and printed the second block with black ink on top of the gray layer and got some interesting results. This got me thinking about printing with multiple colors. I think this might be part of the reason I love working with woodblock - it seems that every step leads to a new idea.

The brown layer.
When I inked the block, I wiped the brown ink off the area of the bird
before printing so that the bird's black ink layer would print clean and sharp over top.

So I printed the original wood block with brown ink, then inked the second block of wood with blue in the water areas and black on the bird and printed that over top the brown layer.

The completed image

The random black marks in this print are happy accidents. The unexpected things that happen with printmaking is one of the things I love about working in this medium.

For now I'm pretty pleased with this print, but I may make more changes as they occur to me.

Bird Bookplates

“It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.”
                                                                                                     ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Wood Engraving
J. Bieruma Oosting, Dutch, b. 1898, d. 1994

Hidden in the basement of the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is Robinson's Fine Prints. If you are a fan of prints, you might want to pay this store a visit. Plan to spend a few hours going through the racks and bins of prints, with prices ranging from just a few dollars to a few thousand. They also have a remarkable collection of books for sale on printmaking and printmakers.

Wood Engraving
Emil Kotrba, Czech, b. 1912, d. 1983

One of the things Robinson's Fine Prints specializes in is bookplates, sometimes called "ex libris", which are usually glued to the inside cover of someone's book to show that it belongs to them. Some book-lovers commission printmakers to create a series of hand-pulled bookplates for their personal library.

Wood engraving
Josef Weiser, Czech, b. 1914, d. 1994

Not all bookplates are of birds, of course. I'm just into birds, so these were the ones that caught my eye. The American Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers has a website with the history of ex libris and examples of hundreds of designs, and articles about various related topics. Aren't these just wonderful little treasures?