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Starting a New White Line Print

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Eucalypt image
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I am starting a new white line print today based on a photograph I took of a beautiful Eucalyptus tree that I saw near the Grampians  and Bacchus Marsh this past March. It really is stunning and I wanted to see if I could capture the essence of it in white line. First I cropped the photograph to about where I wanted what would appear on the carved image. Then I drew just the parts that I thought were enough and traced that drawing. I had already determined the size board I would use and made sure my drawing was a size to fit in the right place on the board.

 

Next I transferred the image to the board using a red colored pencil over the pencil marks that are face down on the board.

Eucalypt transfer to board
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I made corrections to the drawing on the board as well as the tracing paper and original drawing. It is very necessary to keep in mind the size line that the carving tool is going to make, which is always bigger than the pencil line!

Eucalypt original drawing and board
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Once the initial carving is finished, I fill the grooves with white powder to get an idea of how it might look. Again I made changes where necessary but am very careful….you can’t add the wood back in!

Eucalypt with powder on board
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Because this is an Australian image and I have over two hundred water colors I have made from the soils from there, I am going to use them to color this image in. There are only three colors I plan on using, for the leaves a Launceston Hwy Tasmania Light Grey, for the stems an Emily Gap Northern Territory Red and Mildura New South Wales Mud Brown for the gum nuts. For now I plan on leaving the background white with just the embossed edge keeping the shape of the overall image grounded.

Here is the first pulled print. Now I am wondering if I need to use a background color or not. And if I want to enlarge the carved lines….most definitely on the outside edge of the print. But since this took most of the day to get this far, I need to take a break and return to the studio to do some tai chi and yoga stretches…..then a stint on the treadmill and migun bed with another novel being read to me. And finish the day with a nice Australian red wine.

Eucalypt first print
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Designing Books to Accommodate Added Pages/Prints

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Three printmaking books for Baldessin inside
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I am making up some samples of books that could accommodate the addition of prints. The spine must be made deeper to keep the book from having covers that won’t close properly after the additions.

And I am trying several that have no sewn bindings that will do the job. There are classes coming up in Australia in February and March of next year and I think these particular bindings could be very useful; not only for the addition of small prints but other papers as well.

I have also devised a way for a coptic binding to not only hold the prints but the previous page to act as a framing device for the print. The print could actually be removed from this design and then popped back in.

The more I have worked on them the more I realize that with planning ahead, a text such as poetry could be printed on the left hand page. It would require working out the image with appropriate text and laying it all out in the inkjet printed page. I think I will try this.

And I must remember to make a mock up first. This was one of two things that my instructor, John Risseeuw, insisted on back in 1994 when I took his class at Arrowmont. The other thing he stressed was have your content before you even start to make the pages for a book. Everything about the book, paper, form, binding, etc should reflect what the book is about. I do not recall making many blank journals in his class. And they were usually made from scrap materials to demonstrate simple bindings. He along with Dolph Smith were the two workshop instructors I learned the most from in the very few classes I ever enrolled in. Both stressed form following content.

I am presently enrolled in another class coming up at Arrowmont that focuses on surface techniques. Hopefully I will learn from the two designers teaching this class additional ways to have the “feel” of a book reflect more of what the book is about.

It has been several years since I was at Arrowmont and that was when I was teaching a class titled Content and Containment of Intimate Spaces, all about housing the bits and pieces of a personal experience. Some of my most memorable students have come from teaching this class. Their stories stay with me long after they have made their books and placed them into customized boxes of hidden spaces and objects of great importance to their stories.

The instructors for the class coming up at Arrowmont are asking that the students bring in samples of their work to see how their techniques can be helpful. I like that. Now I have two months to figure out just what to show them. It will probably involve earth pigments and the surfaces of books and boxes, but could be other things as well. I will just have to see what is going on in the studio by then. Right now I need to get back in there and begin coloring wood block prints of an iconic Australian tree using watercolors made from the soils down under.

 

Finding Homes for Unique Pieces

Posted on by Sandy Webster

lewis&clarkbook
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This is a piece I made about Lewis and Clark and their expedition out to the Pacific Ocean. It is titled, “The Expedition of the Corps of Discovery” and depicts their travels out and back between 1804 and 1806.

I wanted the book have the look of a satchel so I constructed the box to be slightly deeper on one side and sloping toward the other. The cover paper was treated in a way to look and feel like animal hide and the sides of the satchel are colored with the soils of Missouri.

Once opened a boxed compass that has its lid flipped up fills one window and its needle moves to determine north. It is compass that I found online that is a copy of the one given Lewis by the president at that time. Above the compass is another open compartment that holds bits and pieces that the explorers could have easily put in their pockets at the start of the trip near St. Louis. Below the compass in a third compartment are objects that could have been collected out on the coast. They are left open so the viewer can touch the small collected pieces.

What fills the section to the right is an accordion style book that depicts the trip out on one side and the return voyage on the other. It is interspersed with drawings and quotes from their journals and like the cover of the satchel is made of the same paper treated to resemble hide. The accordion binding is actually done using the piano hinge technique that has been wrapped with sinew to keep the pages up from ground level.

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There are further embellishments to enhance the concept of a travel satchel and it ended up looking and feeling just as I wanted.

The piece has been on exhibit at least twice that I can remember but was never for sale. I don’t sell work like this. I just wanted first to do it and then to have others see it. Now I want to find a home for it. Preferably some place where there is other work about Lewis and Clark, perhaps a museum or a place housing a collection about the discoveries of the explorers.

If anyone reading this has an idea of where I can send this, please contact me through my website. I suspect there will be other artworks looking for homes as well but this one is a good place to start.

The Results: Is It What We Planned?

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Garden Book Open
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The Garden Book is finished and there will be two more made just in case I want to exhibit one. Six blocks were carved to get the images I wanted, larger ones for the backdrop and ones to cut out for the foreground. This took days to make and the best part for me was the carving of the wood and the engineering of how it would all fit together and still be a book, still maintain the idea of being in a three dimensional garden scene.

All of it done to represent the essentials of how our front yard was re-landscaped to have this feeling of stone paths meandering through Japanese maples and boulders and shrubs and coming to an end at the front door where the water garden is.

Garden Book Page 1
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Garden Book Page 2
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Garden Book Page 3
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Garden Book Latch
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We have the large gong but we have yet to see the gate-like structure for it. This will take more time but is coming and be the first thing seen coming up the drive, so it had to be the feature of the first page.

Lately I have been thinking of how those of us who are “makers” just keep making whether we have a place for the work or not. I don’t really have a commercial gallery for artist books. They take so much time to do that pricing seems too hard to figure out and out of proportion to what the buyer would consider spending. It is the same with sculptural pieces that tell a story of their own. There is no way to let it go to a gallery for fifty percent of the retail value. But what else can we do with all these things we make.

I am getting ready to make some new pieces for a shop, The HomeWork Series. The frames cost me $12 each (they are 11″ x 14″). I will paint them next in a color I needed to buy by the case to make sure that there would be enough of this graphite grey when I needed it to keep the pieces consistent. I ordered paper that cost $5 a sheet to get perhaps two mat boards worth cut from each sheet as I cover and create inset shelves for small found objects that go with each piece. Next I will hand stitch a small boro like textile that will suspend from a branch from the garden and hang over a graphite drawing. There will be additional stitching and a small collection of little things related to the image. I will need to purchase glass for the frames and finish the backs where there will also be a small envelope containing a list of materials and techniques used in the completion of each work.

The finished work will maybe sell for $300 maximum in the shop. I will be paid $150. And from that $150 I have spent at least $30 in materials and many hours in the careful planning and execution. At least when I finish these pieces they will have a place to go.

The ones that come back from exhibition are here, waiting for me to make a decision on what to do with them. There are getting to be too many of them. Too many things are coming from my head and hands.

I am talking myself into being a writer. Just pen and paper and most of that ending up in a bin. Seems like a good solution when I finish tackling the problem of too many things on shelves and walls and boxes and corners that I don’t even want to go into.