Summer 2013 Woodblock Workshop

This past weekend I taught a mokuhanga workshop at beautiful Zea Mays Printmaking Studio in Florence, Massachusetts. This was the first time we’ve offered the workshop over three days instead of two days, and it was fantastic. Although it’s possible to learn the mokuhanga basics in a two-day format, it’s a tight squeeze. Three days allows for some spaciousness and an opportunity to experiment a bit with the printing. Here are some photos from the weekend. Enjoy!

The Zea Mays teaching studio is lovely, with ample space for each student and lots of natural light.

Carving a key block (the master outline for the print), which I tried to discourage, but everyone ignored me.

Great use of three colors in this landscape by Nancy, a local artist and illustrator. She preferred printing with wooden spoons over the traditional baren.

Nice detail, use of overprinting, and wonderful whimsy in this print by Diana, an artist/educator from Virginia. She's interested in illustrating children's books.

Jill, an artist and art therapist, also ignored my suggestion to avoid fine linework, and she did a great job. I love the smocking on the upper part of the girl's dress. We learned at the end of the class that Jill's print is a self-portrait from when she was a child.

Kayla, an artist from Vermont, arrived with some blocks already carved, so she was able to spend more of her time printing. She tried some reduction work in the sweater and achieved a lot of rich color and depth.

Gene decided to carve text -- another thing that I would have discouraged if anyone had asked me, and how good that she didn’t ask me! Gene is a sculptor who has also had some previous mokuhanga experience, and this image is a portion of one of her sculptural works.

Lisa, a landscape painter, brought a lovely simplified sketch to work with. She breezed right through the delicate carving, but found the printing difficult. We were using registration boards rather than kento carved on the block, and because Lisa's image is a somewhat abstract image it was difficult when switching to a new block to remember how the previous block was oriented in the jig. After a few printing errors, she ended up marking the kento corner of each block.

Rendez, an illustrator from Virginia, had a lot of ups and downs with his print. He had an experience I've often had, where the first few impressions are coming along really well and then one block just won't print right -- so frustrating. For Rendez it was the black keyblock that wouldn't cooperate.

Here's one of his prints without the keyblock, though, and you can see he has some lovely subtle tones and white line work happening. The group suggested that he might try printing the keyblock in a softer color -- a brown or a maroon tone. He took home some supplies to work on it more.

Roxy's sister has two yellow labs and is due to have a baby any minute now, so Roxy wanted to make this print to celebrate the occasion. The image itself is small and intimate, maybe 3" x 4" overall. Can't you just see it in the baby's room? Roxy also has had previous experience with mokuhanga.

A big thank you to all 8 participants for a wonderful three days!

I'll be teaching an introductory class again in the spring of 2014, probably in March. Check the Zea Mays web site in the fall for details. And if you’re someone who would be interested in an intermediate or advanced level mokuhanga class, please let me know. Once we have a large enough group interested, Zea Mays Studio is willing to host it.