Carving Wood Blocks

I am still carving small images from the garden with the hope of doing a limited edition of small books. This latest one of a lantern under a dogwood tree is not really that good. It started out the full size of 4.5″ x 4.5″ and I think there was just too much information in the image. Information that did not need to be there and I was not that fond of the background.

That is a problem with making the scene too large. All you can do aside from starting over, is continue to cut away until the subject of the image becomes the object that stands out. This was supposed to be about the lantern in moonlight under a tree…..not a lantern in a landscape that happened to have the moon shining behind a tree.

My solution was to just keep carving away until the image was much smaller, making the lantern that much larger. I am still not sure that I like it all that much. There is always the other side to carve on. There is always just tossing it out.

Now I have put it aside after photographing most of its transitions to use as a reminder to plan better in the first place.

To that end I have drawn and colored in with a marker the image I want on this new block. It is easier to see how the print will look doing it this way. I will work a bit on this today and see how this plan works out. In the meantime I have enrolled in a printmaking class this fall just to pick up some ideas of how others work.