testing notes

You guessed it – another block.

Forest Rays

I’m nearing the end of this test printing and I think I’ve solved a problem that was bothering me – what to do with the trees that are in the middle distance. I’ll show you in a bit. But first, yes – I carved another block.

I just needed a little more color on those middle trees – this will be a bright color over their whole leaf surface, so that I can have some highlights more in line with the color the shadows will be. I’ll show you most of the stages of the test print so far.

3 impressions
4 impressions
5 impressions
11 impressions
12 impressions
13 impressions
15 impressions
23 impressions
24 impressions

The exposures are all a little different so the colors aren’t showing up exactly the same in each case, and it may be hard to see what changed.

– The first three impressions used two blocks, one for the light gray, and the other to set up a weird gradient, where I have bluish in the middle and yellowish at each end. This used the block I had previously modified to remove the bright green leaves and tree bark, so that I could have some blue for the sky without affecting those areas.
– The 4th impression added a pale yellow green to most of the leaves at the top.
– You can see what the 5th added!
– 6 through 11 added brown on the tree bark, a bokashi with greenish brown to the ground, and separate bark and shadow colors to the tiny trees in the background.
– 12 made the upper leaves darker, 13 added darker but still dilute sumi to the road and also trees and rocks.
– 14 and 15 added a more intense bright yellow green to most of the leaves, and also some to the ground plane.
– Lots happened in the next 8 impressions! A medium green on the tree in the middle distance, darken ALL of the upper leaves, a dark gray bokashi mostly in the foreground, two blocks to add the shadows that bring out the light rays, MORE pigment on the upper leaves, another bokashi on the ground to deepen it, and finally the decision to try a crazy color on the middle tree.
– The 24th impression added more dark brown to the upper limbs and rightmost tree in a gradient.

So why the new block? Well, when the pre-modification background block was printed all in yellow, these highlights on the mid-range trees looked ok. But if there’s “sky” in those areas, the highlights just look weird. I think they look weird anyway, and need more “leafy” texture. The new block will cover the whole area of that tree, and I can use it to make the highlights more like a yellow or at least olive. And I can modify the block that printed the gold color here to make the highlights more leafy.

So, I’m nearly there! Just the lines are left, and the new block of course. I’m happy with the use of a contrasting color for the middle trees, because they just looked vague and washed out previously. At this point I think I will dampen the REAL paper and start printing this weekend.

Back to the forest

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Now that Floating (to the left!) is done, it’s time to get back to what I was working on before. My idea was for a path through trees, dappled with light, with sunbeams filtering through the leaves. I wasn’t sure how to accomplish the sunbeams, so in a sense, the work on Floating let me test out an idea. I think it turned out as I expected, so It’s given me the courage to move ahead!

I haven’t posted this snapshot yet because it’s really sloppy, but this is about as far as I got with test printing. Mainly the aim was to test out some colors to see what works. I will probably make some more test prints; I think the bluish green is too blue, and I have since removed the hard line between the ground and the background foliage from the key block, hoping to make that a mistier transition.

It seems like a pretty complicated project so far. Here’s the stack of blocks; one is empty on the back so that’s 9 faces, and I think the test prints have about 15 impressions looking back on my notes.

I’ll give a sense of sunbeams by overlaying shadows that intersect and darken.

Originally, I thought the shadow blocks would be really straighforward, without much detail, and had planned to carve them on shina plywood. However, after making the transfer sheets and seeing the size and shape of some of the areas that need to be preserved, it’s pretty obvious they need to go on cherry. So, today I will make one more block! Because that one little bit of shadow on the upper left goes all the way to the top, neither one will fit on the blank face I’ve got — it’s a tiny bit too short.

New shade blocks

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When I started working on the rockpile project, I wasn’t sure where the color would go, what blocks I would need, and so on. I drew and carved the key block, then thought about where the lightest colors would go and carved some color blocks for those, using transfer sheets printed from the key block to locate their edges. I started test-printing in earnest earlier this month, when I had blocks for light grayish, light bluish, green and reddish. First I tested some of the colors I though would be good to use, to see how they overlap and combine to make other hues. I kept notes and spots of color to document the saturation of the pigment I used to print.

After the initial testing, the results of which I showed in the last post, I decided to add some darker shading in some areas. Here are my transfer sheets:

Notice there is a thinner paper of the gampi type laminated on a thicker backing sheet. The lines were printed from the key block, then I marked and colored in the areas of the new blocks that are to remain. The blue is for water and sky shading; the yellow is to darken some areas of the rock, and the pink is for some even darker shadows on the rocks.

These transfer sheets get pasted UPSIDE DOWN on the new blocks using the same registration marks I’ll later use for printing, the thicker backing paper gets peeled off, and often part of the gampi gets peeled off along with it, leaving the face of the gampi with the lines and colors against the wood and visible through what’s left of the gampi. If it is still too thick, I can moisten it a little on one edge, and peel off another layer.

This block is one I’ve already test-printed from, but shows what the transferred gampi looks like after it’s pasted down and the excess is peeled off. It’s super-easy to see what to carve!

Here are my newest blocks after some test printing, and the two surviving test prints with their new shading.

I think it is starting to come together! I think I need a little more color on the trees on top of the hill, and more definition of the cliff face. I’ll see what I can do with my current blocks (there are 7!), but I might need to do more carving.