12 June 2015

A Wind Map

Have you seen wind maps online? They take wind data from the National Digital Forecast Database, which are updated once per hour, and display the data on a beautifully delicate animated map.

The print I'm making right now is about wind. I'm working from a sentence that I found in an early American almanac, a definition of wind:
Wind is an exhalation, hot and dry, drawn up into the air by the power of the sun.
It's an interesting sort of anthropomorphic way to describe wind, and not the way we would define wind today, so I took a liking to it. I'm beginning the print by creating a wind map and I'm using the reduction method, where one prints, carves, prints again, carves again, etc. I started by laying down a light yellow tint using the uncarved block (see previous post), then added some areas of magenta. Then I began to carve. Here's the progress I made this week.

First carving. I tried using a u-gouge but found the birch plywood too splintery, so I used a knife instead.

This is the full sheet of paper, with five colors down and two levels of carving. I discovered during the second carving that a v-gouge worked pretty well and it allowed me more freedom of movement in making the cuts.

Here's a shot of the print with six colors.

Now I'm carving again for the fourth time. It's getting kind of fun now that I've gotten comfortable with the wood.

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