Reduction Linocut #1 and its Afterlife

Once I returned to carving linoleum (or its modern cousin, EZ Cut) after a 25-30 year hiatus, I also started following blogs by artists in this block-printing medium. Interestingly, two women stand out among many male shop teachers and amateurs as both exceptional artists and talented teachers. For artistry, I prefer Sherrie York. For instruction on small processes, Belinda DelPesco. Each discusses reduction prints in some detail. I ignored this subject as I carved my first projects, printing single color blocks or multiple blocks for multiple colors.

Reduction block carving is also called suicide carving because you fully print the edition color by color, carving away more detail on the ONE block to ink the next color. There’s no turning back in any type of lino cutting, but in reduction blocks there is also no further printing beyond the first carefully planned edition. If you want to produce an edition of 10, you’re advised to print 20 of the first color. Each mistake in inking, printing, registration, or carving will cost you prints.

For the duration of Amber Keig’s NVC Community Ed. art class this spring, I stopped painting watercolors and focused on relief printing. It was a very small class, and no one else chose this medium. I stayed with Amber’s assignments in basic elements of composition, value, color, etc., and enjoyed her carefully prepared lectures and slideshows of art work. Then when we each worked on individual projects, I carved my blocks and sometimes went two doors down the hall to use the print shop by myself. It was fun, but I had more success printing back in my garage with the wooden spoon as baren, hand rubbing the prints. This was even the case with my largest subject, a 12×14 image of an oak tree.

As the semester came close to ending, I decided to try a reduction block so I could confer with Amber, a schooled printmaker, on my process. She encouraged us all to notice the bamboo that grows outside the classroom door. I sketched it and decided I had an image I liked but had invested little enough time in to risk sacrificing to my first attempt at a reduction block.  Whatever happened, I would learn something.

Here’s the original sketch:

I decided to try to print 4 times: a yellow, a light green, a more neutral green and a blue. It helps with these projects to visualize what you want it to look like at the end, but that doesn’t mean one knows how to get there. I keep getting hung up on the differences between this medium and watercolor, especially regarding transparency, layering colors, or even mixing inks to create color.

Sure enough, I made mistakes at each stage in the process. One early error I made was in the 2nd carving to reveal the light-infused green of the sun-struck bamboo. It was almost enough to make me throw in the towel. Dang. I persisted so I could accumulate more mistakes and lessons.

Here are the stages and some of the lessons. As always, any attempt to acquire a technique (especially from such a meticulous online demonstrator as Belinda Del Pesco) reveals my own sloppy habits to me.

First carving of block was straight forward: carve out the whites only. Print yellow. Or so I thought. But when I started carving for the second color, I was partway through the process before I realized I wanted light green highlights on the leaves themselves, not around them. 

This is a constant challenge in carving for relief printing, remembering what is negative space and what is positive. One doesn’t carve the color that will be printed. It is the uncarved surface after carving.

Third carving, below, shown not as an addition to the others but as a separate print. I forgot to take a photo of this stage of the “edition” but liked the image enough to make a separate one color print before carving for the next color. Notice the uneven inking. Speedball water soluble inks.

Fourth carving and inking, both versions below. The one on the left I arrived at after seeing that the background blue on the right was too close in value to the background green. The poor ink adhesion on these is only partly due to the quality of the ink itself. In reduction printing, one should let each color dry completely. A push and pull between wet ink on the print and new ink on the block does not yield good results. In fact, any ink layer after the first one may take longer to dry than the first because the ink sits on another layer of ink, not being absorbed into the paper. I was so eager to see results, I completed all in 24 hours. This, remember, I like to attribute to my style. Insert sheepish smile emoticon.

Final result next to original drawing. Not too bad for a first attempt.

Here is another result of the one edition, possible because I skipped a color on one print.

 Yellow, green #1 and blue (skipping green #2)

The block itself was still interesting at the end of the process. By then I also had a new ink, Akua Ultramarine Blue intaglio ink. It was rich and wonderful so I used it to create a single color print of the block.

 

 

 

 To be called an edition, all the prints in a reduction series should match: same colors, same careful registration, same ink coverage. I was aiming for 5-8 and started with 13. I don’t think I have more than 3 that match and that only in that they have similar weaknesses. It was a day of lessons and I enjoyed it.

But I wasn’t done. I decided the final carved block was so delightful I carved a partner to it so I could use the two blocks to make two color prints. As often happens in printing as in watercolor, less is more. That is, each block printed alone left enough unprinted white space to be appealing on its own. I have returned to watercolor painting as summer nears, but when a cool morning presents itself, I sometimes go out to the garage, tear some good quality printmaking paper and some newsprint (which also makes an interesting ground) and play with color. Some of the results get cut and glued into collaged cards. I now have Black, Yellow and Red Akua inks. It’s messy and delightful.

Water Work

Her Sun, His Sky

Late summer studio piece, composed from photos taken last spring along the Napa River between Lincoln and Trancas. The mallards weren’t facing each other. The water was the focus of much of my energies, and, of course, was the impetus for painting this subject. The palette: Cerulean, Cobalt, Manganese Blue, Gamboge, Winsor Yellow, Pyrrol Red, Opera Pink and Burnt Umber. A bit of Titanium White gouache (his bill). The paper is Arches 140 lb. Cold Press. No masking fluid on this one.

When the painting is a realistic scene, I try to convey a specific time of day and season, even a mood. Hope I did so here. Can’t quite explain my inclusion of the diving duck; I didn’t want to draw attention to it so it’s painted in more muted colors, but I could not keep myself from including it. (I’m also the sort of person who laughs at inappropriate times.) Still, this is meant to be a serious work, and I was thinking of a couple we know the whole time I was painting it; she is one of two close friends/family who became a widow this past season. It’s been that kind of year.

not a good month, but painting is prayer

Here’s a poem by Czeslaw Milosz:

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/song-end-world

It’s been that kind of month: spring transitioning to summer in that dazzling way that convinces me yet again that autumn isn’t my favorite time of year after all, this is. It has also been a crushingly sad, dispiriting time. Deaths among family and friends, dire diagnosis for my last living parent. Except that there was much to do to help with memorial services and receptions, visit that parent, and maintain this year’s expanded vegetable garden, I think I could have spent this season sitting glassy-eyed near a window.

“What are you working on?” friends ask. Not much. But then I drift back to the garage (plein air seems to be beyond me right now), fill a jar with water, push a brush around in paint and begin. I have completed a few small things–mainly based on my photographs, mainly floral or avian–that have felt like small prayers. Praying for peace for the widowed friend, calm for my ailing father, and thank you to life for being so sweet that its end is unbearable.

Celebrations have marked this season and spread out across the summer calendar; they are like Milosz’s bumblebee visiting that rose. More prayers to life. More reminders that our lives are brief and must be savored.

 

 

Style notes

Long time, no posts. Have been painting–though there were a few months starting in early November during which I just collaged and jabbed at things with scissors and knives.

Every once in a while a friend will ask how I’d characterize my style. Really can’t say. Have I got one yet? Attended “Monet’s Early Years” show at the Legion of Honor with friend Cindy  recently. His style was clear and somewhat set at an early age. We hobbyists sometimes don’t make such personal statements. That being said, I often find a certain manner of working on a painting that sets in; I’ve referred to this “working it” aspect of my process before. The fact that I can’t purge this from my practice must mean it’s part of my “style.”

Here are a few pieces from the past few months:

You can probably tell just by looking which ones were painted quickly and which were done over a longer period, with much reworking. You can also guess which were painted with photo references and which were done from life. The center landscape of a New England village was based on a blending of several photographs. The lilac still life was painted while sitting in front of those flowers on the dining table (and was my 5th attempt to paint lilacs this spring!). The backyard scene was my 2nd plein air piece this year. The coneflower was done from a photograph that had been enlarged to the same size as my painting of it.   Am still experimenting with palettes and have 3-4 set up, including one of Daniel Smith paints. Have almost used up the few sheets of Saunders Waterford paper I bought a couple of years ago, and am glad of this because I much prefer Arches, 140 lb. Cold Press. I tried 300 lb. again recently and enjoyed it much more than I had last time I worked with this heavier paper:

Enuf, as Aunt Ellen would say. Navel gazing is less interesting than looking out. I hope what’s clear from my paintings is my gratitude for the physical world. Am so lucky to have time and ability to go out in it. If all you have is a window to look out, I pray you have changing light and a scene that mesmerizes you.

Foiled by titles

Titling paintings should be the easiest part of this pursuit. It’s not. I have veered from the merely descriptive, “Alston Park Trail” to quotes from favorite poems. Both practices come back to bite me. The first method fails because I paint scenes of four favorite local parks over and over again so it’s difficult to remember which one is “Westwood Hills Summer Afternoon” and which is “Westwood Hills Lengthening Shadows.” The second method is even worse because I lose memory of the connection between the painting and the quote chosen. Actual conversation on the phone last week:

“Carol, I have a customer here [at the gallery] who is interested in “It All Depends.”

“Oh. [long pause while I rack my brain]. Umm, is that the bee one?”

“Yes. Well, she wants the print but not the frame…”

And we went on from there. The painting is titled “So Much Depends,” which my fellow lit. lovers know is a reference to the short William Carlos Williams poem:

So Much Depends

So much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Bees are essential, right? Like chickens, rain water, etc. But I titled that painting 3-4 years ago and have not had it in the front of my brain much since. Lost connection.

Last summer I painted a couple of large rose paintings.

What Need for Heaven?

Beyond Becoming and Perishing

 

(They’re down at the gallery right now.)   I spent a long time getting the light, shadows and rose hues just right. Pleased as punch with the results, I wanted to connect them to my favorite poet, Theodore Roethke, and one of his best longer poems,  “The Rose”. It’s a beautiful piece of 20th century verse, focused partly on his love of place and of his father, who grew flowers in greenhouses in Michigan. I chose “What Need For Heaven?” and “Beyond Becoming and Perishing,” which both made much sense at the time, but which are tripping me up over and over in the year since. Which one goes with which painting, for instance? Beyond what and who?

Here are three others:

In An Hour It Will Be Summer

 

 

This juvenile green heron painting is titled by a line from a poem by W. S. Merwin, “Avoiding the News by the River,” apt because the heron’s youthful markings indicate the season; it will mature to a solid brown chest and green feathered head

Pied Beauty

 

 

 

 

Another juvenile with its dappled appearance, probably a red-tailed hawk; painting title is also the title of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
that celebrates bi-colored beauty

 

Anecdote of the Soccer Ball

 

 

 

Ritchey Creek with a soccer ball lodged against a rock–it reminded me of Wallace Stevens’ “Anecdote of the Jar”

 

Have not resolved this issue yet. Ran across this phrase in an Octavio Paz poem and like it so much it’s on a post-it note on my desk to try to fit to some future work: “espacio reconquistado” (reconquered space). Back to the simply descriptive titling? Then what should I title this new Westwood Hills piece?

 

 

If at first you don’t succeed…

One of the nicest compliments I’ve received as a painter came from a fellow art workshop student’s friend who attended our final class session/potluck. We each brought several of our finished pieces to critique. The guest, a rugged looking older fellow, looked long and hard at one of my paintings, then said, “This painter’s really working it.” That could be taken as “overworking it” (which I’ve also been told I can do), but I took it as a compliment. Some paintings are a struggle with composition, technique, palette, pigment and paper, but I don’t like to give up. If there’s something else to try to claim a success from a failure, I’m determined to try it, and if those attempts don’t work on the first sheet of paper, I start over, another form of “working it.” That remark made 4 years ago has become my mantra.

This subject was a vineyard scene in autumn under stormy skies. Have had small successes in the past capturing cloud shadows on hills. There was that in this scene, also tree shadows, the ever-challenging geometry of vineyard rows and their curving lines as they follow the contours of hills, and the color of the vines themselves: mainly yellow and red.

black and white image of photo–to emphasize values

It was a windy day, clouds moved quickly, and I caught the scene I later wanted to paint out the passenger window of our moving car. The photo wasn’t perfect but had elements worth developing and enough of the scene’s magic (light, color, lines) to pursue as a subject.

 

 

First, I drew a simple value sketch on grey-toned paper. Fine. I like it, let’s scale it up, sketch it lightly on watercolor paper and start a painting.

notice the added break in foreground vines

Not so fast, apparently. Communicating separate values in black and white is much simpler than doing so in color. I’ve observed this many times, have created colored value charts to focus my attention on the different values of different pigments and various dilutions of different pigments. It still poses a challenge.

color blends

Another problem was hue, particularly yellow and orange. If you don’t paint, you may not know how many decisions a painter makes when creating color blends. Yellow is a particularly tough color to create happy blends with. If the yellow I’ve chosen works well with certain blues to create the greens I want, it fails when blended with reds to make the right hue of orange. It’s not simply a matter of warm and cool though that has something to do with it. For example, I’ve found that Quinacrodone Gold mixed with Phthalo Blue makes a warm, beautiful and plausible (realistic) green–notice the first line blend in the chart. However, it is sooo warm, that, mixed with Quinacrodone Red, it makes a strident orange (line 2 blend). The red is cool (pinkish) so I thought it would knock the intensity down a bit, but it didn’t. Using a different yellow for the orange blend risks creating a work that seems disjointed though this can be done and artists often have a palette of 2 yellows, 2 reds and 2 blues and one earth tone (an umber, ocher or sienna). Look at line four in the color chart here and you can see that using a cooler yellow (Hansa) still made a very intense orange and that making a green from the Hansa Yellow and Phthalo Blue made a poster-paint hue (line 3).

Here are my three attempts to paint the scene with a couple of further sketches between paintings (one in pencil, one in paint) to see if I could learn something about the subject I was still not getting. I worked this thing as much as I could and I’m glad I did. The third painting is better than the first two, and changes in pigments and process helped.

the actual vineyards transition from yellow to red subtly and erratically; that orange took over the whole section quickly and could not be lifted

First watercolor:

(Don’t like the colors, don’t want to paint each row of each vineyard; although I spent some time trying to change things, I did abandon this one without completing it. Can’t accurately report the pigments I used because I let my brush visit several yellows trying to knock down that orange.)

 

 

again with that orange! resorting to oil pastels (mixed media) sometimes works, but it’s often a signal of defeat

Second watercolor, with oil pastel (pencil) over paint:

 

 

 

 

 

 

More sketching, once in pencil, once with watercolor

just shadows

 

 

 

 

 

 

…and a new process and limited palette of 3 colors: Hansa Yellow, Quin. Red, Winsor Blue–Red Shade (Phthalo). Started with an underpainting of the blue and red as a blend to capture shadows. Also forced myself to walk away and let stages dry completely rather than overblending wet areas with further additions of paint.

Early on in 3rd attempt. Shadow shapes in under-painting. Yellows and reds applied with more restraint.

 

 

 

 

The final version (rectangular)

and as framed, (squared)

Morning Energy

Your metabolism may be very different from mine, but I’ve aged into my mother’s oft-repeated mantra: “morning is the best time of day.” Just watched a sunrise of deep pink and orange mackerel clouds as I sipped a 2nd cup of coffee at the kitchen sink. Have been up since 4:45, half an hour after my husband’s usual workday rise.  Now the countdown begins. I can rely on 5-6 hours of good energy before I slow down, this no matter what I consume in protein shakes, cups of coffee, etc. This is the best time of day for a hike, housecleaning, letter writing, menu planning, cooking, gardening, errands–and painting.  I’d say, “let the race begin,” but honestly when I get up this early I take that coffee back to bed and read until it’s daylight.

Most mornings have painting at the top of my “to do” list, but it quickly sinks as I rationalize that I have time to start a winter garden first or should run errands. This is the best time to look for warblers along the river in Kennedy Park. Laundry needs to be sorted, washed and hung up to dry. The microwave hasn’t been cleaned in two weeks and smells like bacon. My studio space is cluttered, and I can’t find things in it. The hummingbird feeders are empty or the dishwasher needs to be emptied. If I don’t get to the grocery store, tonight’s salad will be just lettuce. You get the idea. But if I don’t pick up those paint brushes by mid-morning, it really doesn’t matter whether or not I still have 3 to 5 unscheduled hours in front of me, I don’t have the energy for the work. I imagine this problem is magnified ten times for folks who are still working full-time yet are determined to pursue other passions.

Will save this as a draft because it’s already after 7, I’m still in pajamas, and the day is calling. Maybe when I come back to this I’ll have some images to post of work done.

Hope so.

Ran those errands, looked for the warblers, and framed another print to replace the one sold at the gallery yesterday. Lucky hummingbirds got a new feeder (the old one was leaking). Started work painting by 11 a.m. Not great, but okay.

Today’s goal: finish 2 paintings that have been on the dining room table for 2 weeks. It’s too hot to paint in the garage these days. I started both with grid drawings of 8×10 photos I’d taken in garden and at Tulocay Creek and the Napa River. I work with grid transparencies when I enlarge this way, placing a grid of 2″ squares over the photo to be drawn and sheet of velum with 4″ squares behind another sheet of velum to draw on. If I stand up while working on the drawing, I am freer with my hand and don’t get bogged down on any one square. The heron project involved combining a river photo for the background with a photo I’d taken of a juvenile green heron for the foreground.

After two weeks of working on both (and on neither as I started that garden and did other things), both paintings were close to being finished today. However, the one of roses was starting to seem like an endless process of wash after wash, petal by petal. I wanted to finish it but wondered if I ever would. I think I spent 90 minutes on the roses, 1 hour on the heron:

roses on the left with first washes, heron well begun, Sept. 10th

The finished works:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I enjoyed going back and forth between these two works over the past couple of weeks because their color palettes were so different and my approach to each was too. The roses are not quite glazes, but the washes were almost that thin and carefully built up. You can see from the beginning photo that the heron was almost completely painted in the first couple of days. Its process involved editing; I moved reeds, changed their colors, etc., at one point even thinking of collaging reed shapes onto the watercolor. I am happy to be finished with both and moving on. What’s on tap for tomorrow morning?

Next morning, after staring at image of heron painting on my cellphone for 15 minutes:

Maybe this is the one of the pair of works that will never be finished. The lighting of the photo (pre-dawn indoor) may make the change seem to be one of overall tone. It isn’t. Look at the reeds behind the heron’s beak. Had to break up that rhythm of repeated, evenly spaced horizontal lines that looked like a music chart. The removed reed had at least two other problems: its shape and arc weren’t convincing and it severed one’s visual path up the river too forcefully. Changes like this come from conflicting impulses in the original composition: how much of the background to make visible, how much of the heron’s reedy foreground to communicate, to what degree should the heron be camouflaged/part of the setting or stand apart from it, and how to give the viewer a reasonable path to travel through/around the painting. I’ve finally made my decisions. I think. Gouache is my friend. Who says watercolor doesn’t allow editing?

Playing

Thought I was going to paint today. I have 2 or 3 pieces to finish up, many ideas for others. Watercolor is a form of play, too, but today’s energy led me to another form of game  altogether. Have started making stamps of California Towhees for printing. Here’s where I stopped my cutting, gluing, inking, messy play.I think all I really wanted to do today was create wrapping paper. Dunno. Fun though.

 

 

Thirteen ways of looking at…

…a bird of any kind is a goal of mine in painting. The Wallace Stevens poem* is the inspiration, as are the many birds Fred and I watch in our yard and on our walks. Though I don’t have 13 separate interpretations of this California Towhee image, I’m getting closer than I have with juncos, scrub jays, herons, etc. Here’s the original photo:

The bird’s posture is so charming. We sprinkled black sunflower seeds on top of the fence to attract these visitors. Here are some of the images I’ve created so far:

        

    

As you can see, I’m sticking mainly to water media. The plate was glazed in Laurie Curtis’ majolica workshop at Pt. Reyes (search for it and go!). The bright blue was an ink monoprint that I then added watercolor pencil to. The black and white “block-print” is actually white gouache used as a resist to a layer of permanent black ink, dried and washed off, with watercolor glazing added afterwards. The next three images are from cutting (scissors, knife) a thin sheet of foam rubber. Ideally the positive stamp will be used with a second smaller stamp to indicate the pale orange under-tail. Stamp cutting and printing was inspired by an evening with Pamela Gregory. Oh, and here’s a “photo collage”:

Between other projects, I have also been making bookmarks with scraps of my marbled papers and small photo copies of my bird paintings so that’s probably next for this fellow:

*“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

(Read the poem–even if you already know it, even if you found this post on a search for “water media techniques”–it will be the most memorable thing you take away from this page. Promise.)

 

Making an easel to fit your camera tripod

Search this entry’s title on the internet, and you’ll find all sorts of ideas for turning your camera’s tripod into a base for an easel. What appeals about this project is the cost and the fact that–if you have a somewhat decent tripod already–you know you will have an easel that will be stable and can TILT in several directions.

We had scrap plywood, 1/4 inch thick to cut to size as a base for the tripod. It needs to be thin because so a pair of clips can grip it to hold the watercolor paper down. Thin is also  lightweight, a good thing if one intends to carry the easel with for plein air painting.

We also had some scraps of L-shaped molding that could serve as a lip at the bottom of the easel, just enough of a ledge to put a smallish brush on. This isn’t necessary, just handy. Look at other people’s advice, and you’ll find ways to hang a water bottle, paint rag, etc., but I started with a simple plan.

My husband cut the plywood 13×19 so I could use 12×14 and 12×18 papers, notebooks or pads on the easel. Anything larger (16×20 is a favorite size), we may make a separate easel base for later. This can be taken on a trip to the mountains, beach or local park. He also cut a 3.5×3.5 square of scrap wood to glue and nail to the center of the back of the plywood. This will house the insert nut that attaches the easel base to the camera tripod. Standard is 1/4 inch; check yours.

insert nut, 1/4″

The insert nuts were cheap and came in a package of 4 at Home Depot. We could make 4 different easel bases! Follow the package directions to drill a hole somewhat smaller than the diameter of the nut, then hammer the nut in, rounded edge down. It will be flush with the wood.

 

 

the nut hammered into block of wood thick enough (1/2″) to hold it, then attached to plywood base

 

Make sure you center the nut in the block of wood and center that piece on the back of the easel, for obvious reasons of balance.

Both nails and wood glue were used to attach the block to the plywood.

 

the attaching bracket swings open to give access to knob that tightens insert nut to tripod’s threaded screw

 

The overhang on the lip has a hole drilled into it in case I decide to hang a hook for a rag or loop the handle of a small water container on it. Fred just used small tacks to nail and glue this to the plywood base.

Ready to paint. Still need a tray (or lap, or the ground) for brushes and water container, but the tripod can tilt to make wet washes flow in the direction I want; the tripod legs can be collapsed for sitting or extended for standing.  I hope if you try this it works for you.