Heron project 2

A few test prints!

This heron is pretty tired of having fish every day.

I’m actually printing the first few colors now, but will need to do some more testing of the final layers. The steak looks best in the one on the left, after I got rid of the line defining the front edge of the upper surface. The yellow is too saturated on the rightmost image and too light on the third; the water looks best on the second; and I like the like brown bokashi in the third image on the topmost and foreground rocks. The blue is required for the water but not working for the rock shadows in the foreground, at the water line and under the bridge. That’s the main experiment that needs to be done!

Heron Project setup stuff

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I use the same surface for drawing that I do for carving, and I can’t really put a hole through it, so here is my bench dog solution. I opted for holes at the edge where they won’t interfere with the drawing surface. For now, at least, since I don’t think I have to use much force when clearing large areas of waste, this will work.

Here’s the outside kento I built for the heron print. The blocks vary in thickness, so I have to prop some of them up. I used a chunk of yellow pine to make the registration block on the bottom, and boy is it hard!

Heron project 1

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Fish again? Sooooo boring….

Blocks

I started working on this print during my recent trip to Japan. I was gifted a few small off-cuts of cherry-surfaced plywood from the folks at Mokuhankan (mokuhankan.com). These were only 2 3/8 inch by 7 inches, so I opted for a vertical design. Since the pieces are so small, I decided I would use the full surface, and would construct an outside kento – basically a jig to hold the blocks that incorporates registration marks. Using the full surface is sort of risky, because if the edge gets damaged, that affects the image, but I felt it was worth the risk since the dimensions were so small.

Here are the blocks as they were before I started much of the test printing.