365 Day 178

another material in printmaking class

Tonight in relief printmaking class at Art & Ideas, Shaqe gave us a new material to try. It is called Blick Wonder-cut. She also had us choose another of our sketch book drawings.

I went in all excited about that super hero drawing from a few days ago. Shaqe liked it but guided me back farther into my sketch book. Good thing she did, too.

We found this page. I was looking at the page as three or four separate characters/drawings. Shaqe helped me see that the three figures could work together as a piece. They also are closer to the earlier carvings I have done in class. This will all get pulled together later as we put our series together. Hmmm...sounds cool.

So this Wonder-cut stuff...I am not terribly fond of it. It has a surface texture to it to begin with. It also smells a little like cork...and acts a little like cork. It is a little bit spongy to cut. You put your blade into it and when you pull it back the material kind of closes up a bit. Hard to describe. Also, my outline lines are waaaaay wider than with the other materials. Both the softer E-Z-cut and the harder Blick Golden-cut tend to give you the line that you carve. This Wonder-cut material is very different.

I am very glad to have the opportunity to try out so many different carving materials. I know now that I like the Soft-cut gray for some things and I like the Golden-cut for others. I know you have to be more careful with the storing of the Soft-cut because the surface can get scratched and marred. The Golden-cut gives you a more hard surface for your block. The Wonder-cut is probably good for something that I haven't figured out yet. This class is really great!

Also tonight -- I delivered my completed bear-ish guy print, matted and framed, for the upcoming all ages student show. I am very excited about this show. The age range of the artists is 5-70 years -- how cool is that! You will have to wait to see the photos from the show...opening is July 9. I will post more about it as the date gets closer...and plenty of photos from the show.




we traced a detail from a drawing in our sketch book














then we played with variations of it













then we chose the one we liked and transferred the image to the Golden-cut block...you can sort of see the surface texture in this photo...kinda sorta tiny like bumps, sort of grainy but not...the material doesn't really crumble or anything













I have carved the outlines in this photo and taken out a little bit for white areas...you can see how much wider my outlines are...the material doesn't really want to be cut a whole lot closer...it is cork-like and soft-ish...you put your blade in and when you pull it out the line expands (or something)...hard to describe

it's not a bad thing, I just don't care too much for it in comparison to the other materials










a test print of the carving...this is actually the second print after I tweaked the first version...I'm not done with this yet and perhaps I will get used to inking the surface...I know I want to give it a background of some sort...I had an idea on the way home