Monday, August 18, 2014

Another Woodcut Finished

Crouching Green Heron. Two-block Woodcut by Ken Januski.

It's taken a while but I've finally finished the multi-block Crouching Green Heron woodcut above. It is an edition of 10, printed with Daniel Smith water-based inks on Rives Heavyweight paper. The entire print is 7x10 inches and the image alone is 4x6 inches.

It really isn't all that much different from when I last showed it. But I wanted to do something more with the background, especially in the top half of print. I also toyed with the idea of cleaning up some of the chisel marks in front of the heron that picked up various bits of ink.

Then I had a bright idea, something I should know to be wary of. I decided to cut the backside of one of the blocks as a third block. I would cut out the heron and the two horizontal stripes and then print one color over all that was left and then perhaps another on the upper area. Below you see the wo results.

Crouching Green Heron. Abandoned Proof of Two-block Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Crouching Green Heron. Abandoned Proof of Two-block Woodcut by Ken Januski.


As a test I showed one of them to Jerene without telling her that in fact I wasn't going to use this version. I wanted to see if her opinion was similar to mine. I DON'T LIKE IT!, she said. Well neither did I. I suppose with a lot of work it would be possible to get something usable out of it. But I much preferred the earlier version.

So I gave up on the idea of cleaning up the area in front of heron and opted to just concentrate on adding some vibrancy to the top half.  I was able to do that and give just a hint of detail as well. So as far as I'm concerned it worked out well, but not without a very scary detour!

It's not often I complete two woodcuts in a week and my guess is that it will be a long time before it happens again. I'll enjoy it while I can.

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