13 December 2009

Five Impressions From Two Plates

This weekend I printed the two plates I showed you two posts ago. I started by using the plain block to lay in some color just to make a "dirty-looking" under-layer for the background.

Dirty

Ultimately I want this background to be a dull bluish-gray, so what you see in the photo above is a goma-zuri (speckled) sumi ink gray plus a wash of pale yellow to dull things down.

Next I added a layer of blue:

GrayBlu

Things got a little tricky for me at this stage, because I loved the wood grain that came through. I had no idea that this would happen. I knew that I would lose the grain by overprinting with a different block, and I could have re-carved the "wormy" pattern into the flat block so that I could overprint the same grain, but I'll need this flat block again later, so I decided to continue with my plan.

Next I added gray blue on top of the plain layers using the "wormy" block. The photo below shows a double hit of the blue:

GrayBluWormy

There's still more to be done with the background, but I need to carve a couple of new blocks in order to proceed, so for now I'll let the prints dry out and moisten them again when I have the new blocks ready.

3 comments:

kit said...

It's so interesting to learn how you build your layers.

Carpet Bomberz Inc. said...

I think it's shaping up really well, and you're definitely achieving that 'biological' look you were aiming for.

Celia Hart said...

I like that Annie - it's like faded indigo fabric (loved the link you put on Twitter BTW)

Best wishes
Celia