This is the finalized print. The original photo of the pose made me think of someone pushing against something really immovable, like trying to move a mountain. So I thought of rocks. And then, as I began to sketch, they became floating rocks. As the print evolved, I wanted to see the rocks look both heavy and light, so I made them transparent. Here are the steps to the final. 1) I printed the figure, first a blue for his clothing:
2) And then the black keylines:
As I suspected, the black changed the color balance a lot, so I decided to heavy up the rock colors. I wanted to keep them as textured as possible, so I played with different ways to get tonal variations. 3) First I tried some sweeping brushstrokes, like a rough bokashi:
4) I didn't like the smoothness in this case, so I tried something else. I put down some pigment and used my hands very lightly to print it. I like the way it turned out. Here are some closeups of the rock textures:
3 comments:
Love this series Annie. 8-] The rocks are really nice.
Wonderful grainy (granular) printing, Ellen! Reminds me of the many hours (and thousands of quarters) mis-spent in my youth playing "Asteroids"!
Love your Tai-Chi guys, too!
That 'blotchy' printing you talked about earlier (dark blotch in the pushed rock) is from a spot on the block where the planer encountered some curl in the grain -- so in that area the grain was left sorta 'felted' -- it's fuzzy and holds more water than smoother areas, so prints darker. Sanding with fine (like, 400 grit) paper reduces these fuzzy places so they print more like the rest of the surface -- such sanding does not seem to me to reduce the printing of wood grain at all.
You're making such RAPID progress!
-- Mike
Hey - these are amazing! I'm fascinated with block printing but just can't add another art thing right now.
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