Hog Hammock -- Printing!

It is finished. 


.....Well..... almost. I reserve the right to do a few prints in this edition in brown, maybe with some added zing with the help of a few watercolor washes. For now, I'm fairly satisfied with this  AP (Artist's Proof) I've pulled. 


Here are a few photos of the printing for your viewing pleasure. If you have any questions about the process, leave a comment and I'll get back to you right away. 

Finally Back: Carving Hog Hammock

Well, its been about a week, please excuse my absence. I've been driving through Appalachia to visit family and working my day job. But now I'm back, with more on my on-going project. I finally found linoleum in the dimensions I want, and began the carving process!


Perhaps you'll remember my earlier post on planning and sketching for this piece. With this done, carving the actual printing plate is made much simpler. 


To carve a printmaker needs a cutter (one with exchangeable tips or several different cutters) and artist's linoleum blocks. Having tracing paper also makes everything a lot easier. I first traced my sketch onto the tracing paper with a soft graphite pencil. 

Then, I flipped the tracing paper over on top of the linoleum, and rubbed over all my lines with a smooth, rounded object -- in this case the flat of my fingernail, but you could use the back of a spoon or the butt of your cutter, etc. 

The wonderfully convenient thing about this method is I now had a reverse-image of my sketch on the linoleum. This way the finished print will look as I planned, instead of being flipped. And I avoided having to try to redraw the inverse image on the plate by hand. Since my linocut features a lot of small, relatively detailed figures, I did go back over some of the lines left after rubbing so I had very tight lines to follow in carving. 


Now I was ready to take my knife to it! 


This linoleum was particularly gritty, and dulled my tips a bit. Dull tips lead to slipping and cut hands -- I'll probably put something up about how to sharpen your tips soon. 

My plate isn't quite finished yet -- I have some details on the building and the people to finish -- but it's getting there! Check back over the next couple days to watch the progress. 

Hog Hammock -- Planning & Simplifying

     This may not be true for everyone, but I find that if I want to make anything I can be proud of I need quite a bit of planning to go into it. In relief printing, certainly, you need to consider exactly how you are going to portray you subject. I've found that linocuts have made me a better artist because they require me to plan and to simplify. My subject needs to be broken down into dark and light at the very least, and only a few colors at most. It requires me to examine my subject very closely and to chose how I am going to depict it with a very limited pallet. 

     "Posterized" images of the Beatles are a good example of this simplification (unfortunately, I couldn't find the artist or company that created this image, it's listed on a  wall paper site, but still a good example). Of course, it is easy to achieve this effect using software to modify photos, but it is valuable to be able to see things this way -- to boil them down to their essential values and lines. This skill is essential to a good artist. I find that it is very helpful to practice rendering scenes, or landscapes, or anything I'm planning as small value thumbnails before I begin a more detailed study. 

    Just because it's basic doesn't mean it is easy. I've just spent the last two hours sketching for my piece on Hog Hammock, and I'm still not completely satisfied. But, I think I've got a strong enough composition to press on, even if my sketch isn't as polished as I'd like it too be. Planning is important, yet I can say as a recovering perfectionist that if you get bogged down in perfectionism you will never finish anything, much less be satisfied with it.