[Baren]: The mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking.

Baren Digest              Saturday, 1 August 1998      Volume 04 : Number 231

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Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 11:49:24 -0400
From: April Vollmer
Subject: [Baren 1279] Gouache and Stonehenge

Catching up on some old mail, I found Jean Eger's mail about Katherine
McKay. I saw a demonstration by Katherine McKay, at a show we were in
together in SF last year put together by Elaine Chandler of McClain's.
Katherine is a great person doing beautiful desert images. But don't
beleive her paper recommendations!!! Watercolor (and GOUACHE) from tubes
works fine, but BFK Rives is not the best choice for printing hanga.

STONEHENGE is the tip I wanted to pass along to hanga
newcomers...although washi is so great, and so important to hanga printing, 
Stonehenge is the western paper that is most suitable for beginners and 
for proofing. Good color, even printing, stiff enough not to drop in the low 
areas of your print. (It will shrink and swell with moisture, though.)

Also, GOUACHE is used in hanga, not just watercolor. It is basically
watercolor with calcium carbonate added to make it more opaque. It
prints more uniformly than watercolor. It can be used from the tube, or mixed
from pigment dispersions. (Pigment dispersions are easier to use than
powdered pigment when making color because they don't need to be ground further.
I get them from Art Guerra. Wilcox Guide has a lot of good pigment info.)

I'm teaching a hanga summer class now, and struggling with the problem
of what are the most imporant points about hanga to pass along in a limited
time...hanga  is such a big topic, it's hard to decide!

I will recommend the encyclopedia to those who want to study in more
detail. Thank you, Dave!

P.S.:Dave, that trick with the wood chip for sharpening chisels, is it
for small flat chisels or for small rounded bevel chisels (aisuki)?

April Vollmer

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From: David Bull <davebull@woodblock.com>
Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 15:22:13 +0900
Subject: [Baren 1280] One-Point lesson ... 

Here is this week's 'One-point' lesson (contributed by David Bull)

********** ********** **********

(#16)  Making sharpening stones for curved chisels ...

It's not difficult to find suitable sharpening stones for the _flat_
tools in the printmaker's arsenal, but it is difficult to locate stones
that match one's  _curved_ gouges and chisels.  Ready-made grooved
stones are available, but the grooves never seem to match the tools on
hand, and even when they do, the grooves soon erode into different
shapes with use.  As the years go by, and one builds up a collection of
gouges of various widths and depths, sharpening them becomes
increasingly frustrating.

The solution is to make your own grooved stones.  Although we grow up
thinking of 'stone' as a hard unchangeable substance, it turns out to be
quite easy to create the needed shape.  

Start with a new, flat, man-made stone of medium grit, and draw a few
pencil lines down its length to delineate the width of the channels you
wish to make.  Then, using a steel ruler or strip of wood to keep it in
the proper line, scratch down along the surface of the stone repeatedly
with the head of a large nail.  Don't try and dig the entire channel
with the nail head, but just score a 'starting line' in the centre of
each channel.

When this guide line is well established, switch to your next
'high-tech' tool - a hand-sized piece of plywood of appropriate
thickness, with one edge rounded to the shape of the desired groove (the
convex shape), and with a medium-grit sandpaper (about #180) glued to
this edge.  Rub it along the developing groove (concave), splashing
water constantly onto the stone as you do so.  In a surprisingly short
time, the groove will deepen out to the required shape.

Three or four different grooves can usually be cut into a single stone
this way.  Don't throw away the sandpaper block(s) when you are done, as
they will also serve to retouch the shape of the channels if they wear
unevenly during future sharpening.

This stone will do half the job of sharpening - forming the bevels on
the 'outer' surface of gouges and chisels.  Stones for the 'inner'
curved surface?  They are just as easy to make ... 

(Part Two to follow later ...)

********** ********** **********

Next week,  April gets 'fresh and minty' ...

These 'One-point' lessons are being collected into a section in the
[Baren] Encyclopedia of Woodblock Printmaking.
http://www.woodblock.com/encyclopedia/updates.html

Contributions from experienced printmakers for future 'One-pointers' 
are eagerly solicited.

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From: David Bull <davebull@woodblock.com>
Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 15:24:26 +0900
Subject: [Baren 1281] Monthly update ... 

April asked:
> P.S. Dave, that trick with the wood chip for sharpening chisels, is it
> for small flat chisels or for small rounded bevel chisels (aisuki)?

April is referring to 'One-point Lesson' #10 ...  
http://www.woodblock.com/encyclopedia/topics/018/018.html

The technique Ito-san showed me was for keeping the _back_ of the chisel
flat against the stone while sharpening.  This will thus work for either
the flat chisels or the bull-nosed aisuki, both of which have a flat
back surface.

***

It's the end of another month, and time to see how the Encyclopedia has
been doing ...  Here is the current 'Top 10' (along with previous
month's rankings) 

1 (2) - Contributors to the Encyclopedia
2 (1) - Printmakers on the web
3 (3) - 'Editor's Choice' Exhibition
4 (6) - Carving Techniques for Creating Texture (Mundie)
5 (4) - Basic Carving Tools (Bull)
6 (5) - Suppliers in America (Bivins)
7 (7) - 'Turn of the Century' Printmakers Exhibition
8 (new to top 10) - Bibliography
9 (10) - Traditional Keyblock Method (Bull)
10 (8) - Newbie Journal (Esposito)

Dropped down to #11:  - The Tokuno book 

I have also updated the monthly 'stats' page at:
http://www.woodblock.com/stats/stats.html

Interesting to see that the Bibliography section is of such interest to
people.  Here is a place where all of you can easily make additional
contributions ...

James is still climbing in the 'standings', and I should perhaps mention
to everybody how he has managed this - and it _wasn't_ by repeatedly
'hitting' his own page (the server is smart enough to recognize this,
and doesn't 'count' repeated accesses coming from the same ISP ...)

Jim is simply including the address of his Encyclopedia page with a lot
of the mail he sends out to people.  This serves as an excellent way for
him to show them just what he is doing.  He uses both the address of the
page of his entry itself, or just the address of any particular image
that he wants somebody to look at.

Those other [Baren] members who are in the Encyclopedia (or on the Who
is Baren? page) are quite free to do the same ...   You can easily find
the correct address to use by accessing the page which you wish people
to visit, and then simply copying what you see in your browser's
Location window.

Using Jim's as an example, such an address would be:
http://www.woodblock.com/encyclopedia/entries/015_01/015_01_frame.html

(or alternately, if you didn't want to include the encyclopedia page
heading:
http://www.woodblock.com/encyclopedia/entries/015_01/015_01.html)

(Be careful to distinguish between 'one' and 'ell', 'zero' and 'oh', and
the 'underline' and 'dash' characters.)

There is _another_ reason why Jim's page is getting a lot of action,
although this one doesn't cause the page count to increase.  One of his
_images_ is getting multiple accesses daily.  The internal file name of
the image in question is 'girl.jpg' (it's one of his portraits ...), and
this was picked up a while ago by a robot from 'Hotbot'.  So now
whenever some geek out there types the word 'girl' into the Hotbot
search engine it seems that the address of this image is one of the
things that the engine returns ...  

What do you think James, are those people a little bit disappointed when
they download your portrait?  Have you got something a little more
'spicy' we can give them instead?

***

Now that there are only five months left before my exhibition, I've
started to get the publicity things rolling.  This week I've written the
'advance notice' flyer (a simple A4 size sheet that I will run off at
the local convenience store), and have put in an order for multiple
copies of a couple of photographs that I will glue onto it before
mailing it out.

This first flyer will go to media organizations that need a long lead
time - monthly magazines, television producers, etc.   I spent an hour
or so in the magazine rack at the local bookshop, updating my mailing
list with additions of new magazines and publications and also with
changes of address on ones that are already in my 'database'.

Over these next five months, would it be of any interest to [Baren]
members if I described some of these preparations?  For myself, I know
that I would very much like to hear how the rest of you promote and
prepare your exhibitions.  We talk a lot on this mailing list about
pigments and papers and sharpening, etc., but we don't seem to spend too
much time on such 'peripheral' things as what to do with our prints once
we have made them.

I think this part of it is just as important as the making.  If nobody
_sees_ our work, what is the point of doing it?  

Dave

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From: Hideshi Yoshida <dodoland@silver.plala.or.jp>
Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 20:22:49 +0900
Subject: [Baren 1282] new page 

To Baren,
I uploaded new pages to my wesite.
You can see the process of making a new print.
Enjoy !

Hideshi

http://www1.plala.or.jp/Hideshi/

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End of Baren Digest V4 #231
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