Strike A Match

STRIKE A MATCH
Watercolor woodblock (moku hanga)
11 x 17 inches (28 x 43 cm)
Made from 5 blocks, 14 hand-rubbed applications of color
Edition of 12 on Yukimi paper

Fourteen applications of color is as far as the paper would let me go, so this print is finished. I have some more circular bokashi ahead of me, so I'll be a pro by the time I've got this series (Playing with Fire) completed, but my technique still needs work.

A friend on Facebook noted the other day that limitations are an excellent fuel for creativity, which made me aware of how I often establish rules for myself prior to making a series of prints in order to keep things manageable. The limits/rules I set up for this series are:
- all images come from video stills of fire
- same color palette for all
- I will show only the flames, not the fuel being burned

First I selected some shapes from a slow-motion video of a match being struck:

I transferred individual shapes from this sketch onto five different blocks and then carved them. Then I tested how the shapes looked when printed and played around with different ways of doing the printing. I often regret showing this kind of background work because invariably someone says that they like the proofs better than the final, but I feel strong enough to take it, so here are some of the proofs I made:

The shapes are really interesting and look like a kind of flower, but I wasn't happy with how "solid" they looked. Not at all like fire. I wanted it to look more ethereal and very bright at the center, so that's how I ended up printing 14 layers of bokashi instead of these more solid shapes.

One of my bokashi in the final was more like a rainbow roll (below). Except with water and a brush instead of ink and a roller. And round instead of straight across. And yes, that's a shoe brush. Not the highest quality brush I own, but just the right size.

Above is a shot of the full edition all laid out on my kitchen floor so you can see how consistent (inconsistent) my bokashi is from print to print. Not bad, but they're definitely not all exactly the same. That's OK with me.