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. 

Birching (haha) for Autumn

Broiling in the 98-degree Georgia heat has me pining for cooler days.


Since I am going to have to go and purchase a specially-sized linoleum plate for my Hog Hammock project, I took the day and worked on some other, smaller pieces.


I had already carved a linoleum plate of a stand of birches, and one of a fern's stem. I began by mixing a copper-brown ink with a palette knife on my ink palette (a frame and glass I bought at a thrift store). At present, I am using water-soluble Speedball inks. I rarely use the ink straight from the tube; I like to have more control over the exact shade and hue of my colors. I made a border for the print by inking the edges of a blank 3"x4" piece of lino, and then printed the image of the fern on top, after the border dried. 

For my Birches print I mixed a sky-blue and rolled it using a brayer onto the the paper in the area I had marked off for the print. After the blue dried, I inked the plate and carefully aligned it over the previous layer, and laid the print down. 

It is important to press very firmly, using a baron, a large spoon, or a block to make sure the ink is fully transferred. If you are using a flexible lino plate, you can cheat a little bit by pulling up from one corner (while keeping the rest of the plate firmly in place), and checking to see if the print has fully transferred. 

Et voila! C'est fini! 

You can see (or purchase) the finished product, and see more of my work and my Etsy store.

Thanks for stopping by! 

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. 

In Progress..... Hog Hammock

     Today I am hoping to start carving a plate for another print based on a visit I made to Sapelo Island a few summers ago. The Live Oak and the Moon was the first linocut I've done that I was satisfied with, and now I am in the planning stages for a lino of Hog Hammock, a unique community on the island -- the last true Geechee community on Georgia's barrier islands.

      Having meaningful subject matter -- whether it is meaningful because of the elements of design used, or the history of the subject, or the emotional content infused by the artist -- is the first step in making art that pulls the viewer in. At least, in my opinion, it's an important part. Hog Hammock is a vibrant community composed completely (according to what I have read) of the descendants of 400 slaves who lived on the island, supporting the lifestyle of the Spaldings, the plantation owners there (the ruins of the early Spalding house are pictured below). 

      Hopefully tomorrow I'll have something more concrete to show, and a little technique-oriented information.