Some of the past week went well; some was challenging. But I think it will all work out. I hope!
TRANSFERRING THE IMAGE
The first thing I did, once the black block was carved and proofed and cleaned up, was transfer the image to the other blocks. I could have done that by tracing the image onto each block, same as I did for the black in the first place. But I’m never sure I’ll be able to trace each line exactly as I did before. Instead, if I use the image that was already carved, I know just where things have to match up.
I taped a piece of mulberry paper into place on my jig. I could have fit it into the kento cuts each time, but this made sure it wouldn’t move. First I inked the black block and printed it. Then I flipped the paper out of the way, put a blank block in place, flipped the paper back up onto it, and rubbed. The image transferred from the paper to the block, and showed me exactly where the carved black lines actually ended up.
This shows the setup before transferring the design to the blue block. The paper taped in place is inked and ready for the transfer.
Here's the inked paper flipped into place, ready to transfer the design.
And here are the blocks for the tulip, red, green, and blue, with the black outlines printed onto them. As you can see, the blocks aren’t all the same size. Since some colors, like green or the tulip, don’t extend out near the edges, I used smaller pieces of hardboard and lino. The hardboard does have to reach all the way to the lower right corner where it fits into the jig. (You can see I marked that corner with Sharpie if you look close.) But the lino doesn’t necessarily have to fill all that space. Sigh – I did miss something, though. The hardboard for the tulip block should have been wider, even though it doesn’t need lino any farther to the left. But it would have been steadier in the jig if it stretched further out that way. As it is, it doesn’t touch the jig’s guide on the left side. This will give me problems later!
CARVING
The next few days were spent just carving lino. I do enjoy carving lino. A good thing! This is where the design’s black outlines make things easier. Each color has to cover its own space, but it also extends under the black outline that surrounds it. That way, I have a little leeway. If the carving isn’t exactly perfect, or the registration wiggles a bit, the black line should cover up any missed areas.
Here’s the red block all carved. You can see that the black outlines are still showing. In the finished print they’ll have a layer of red ink as well as a layer of black. The tool in the picture is a Japanese chisel called a toh. It’s used in woodblock carving, but works great on lino as well. I like it for smoothing away the raised carving lines so they won’t make chatter marks when I print. I also use it to smooth the edges of the areas that are left raised but that won’t be printed. Those raised areas can be useful in several different ways, and if they’re rounded off, they won’t leave dents in the paper.
Embarrassing admission time. Here’s a place where I messed up, and how I worked around it. This is the green block. I was planning to print a light green, then carve away the stems and leaves of the small flowers and print the tulip leaf in a darker green. Because the carving is complicated here, I first looked the block over carefully, used a pencil to clarify any edges that were blurry, and marked little “X”s on the areas that should be cut away. Good planning, yes. Then as I was carving around the stems and buds I saw a bud without “X”s around it, thought “Oh, I must have missed that one”, and carefully carved an outline around it. And then realized it was in the middle of the green tulip leaf, where it would leave a white oval in every print. Can you see it, on the left side, near the curvy center line of the tulip leaf?
Gloom, despair, aargh what can I do now? I have plenty of lino but I’m out of hardboard till I get an order from Dick Blick. I don’t have any scrap pieces of hardboard large enough to replace the green block. But – wait – the tulip leaf is the only bad part. If I just replace that…
I found an old block from a reduction print I did last winter. Since I hadn’t carved away all the areas that didn’t print, there was enough lino left on that block that if I turned it the right way, I could fit the leaf onto it! Hurray!
I transferred the black lines to the new block just as I did before. Here’s the block with the new carving as well as the carving from the older print.
And the old green block became the light green block, with the tulip leaf carved away.
PROOF!
All the blocks are carved now. Time to try them out with a quick test print, and find out if I got it right.
I didn’t bother mixing exact colors, just used ones I already had on hand. I printed the tulip in pure yellow. The light green was a mixture left over from another print; so was the darker green. (I keep my mixed colors in aluminum foil packets where they stay good for weeks.) The blue was Pthalo blue plus extender. The red and orange were leftovers too.
I used different papers; still more leftovers. That’s why the intensity is so different in each print. I printed the black on one, with a lot of extender to make it translucent. I wanted to see the other colors show through it, so I’d know how well they lined up. I left the other with no black outlines, again, so I could see how well things lined up.
Oh. I discovered a BAD MISTAKE. Actually, one mistake and one problem.
Look at the closeup. That tulip leaf again! See the glaring little white area near the middle? When I carved the blue block, I thought that spot would be green. When I carved the new green block, I must have thought it would be blue.
Another Aargh! But you don’t see that spot in the prints hanging up to dry. It’s small enough that I can dab in a bit of blue, blot it, and just pretend it didn’t happen.
So much for the mistake. Now for the problem – that’s the tulip block. Remember I said it was too small to sit firmly in my jig? It fits into the corner of the jig but isn’t wide enough to touch the guide at lower left. It wobbles. See how far off the outlines are at the bottom of the tulip? To check the wobble, I printed the tulip twice, once in yellow, once in orange. This is the print that doesn't have the black block printed on it. The black lines here are the ones from transferring the design to the block (I didn’t wash them off the block before printing.) Here, they help to show the difference in position between the the orange impression, where block was pressed to the right, so that it fit tight at the top of the jig, and the yellow impression, where it was rocked down on the left side.
I think I can work this out, by doing some test prints with the yellow block and the black, to figure out just which position in the jig makes it match up best. Actually I had made a note when I transferred the design that that block was too small, and should be carefully set to fit tight at top right. Which I forgot to read when I printed these proofs. I’ll just have to test that positioning, and then when I print the tulip, I’ll add a temporary guide to the jig just for that block. The black outline will help to cover up any wobbles anyway.
So much for this week’s work.And I found time for the garden, too!