Baren Digest              Thursday, 24 April 2003      Volume 23 : Number 2202


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From: John and Jan Telfer <jtelfer#iinet.net.au>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 03 21:43:53 +0800
Subject: [Baren 21367] Re: Questions 

Dear John,

Welcome to Baren. and yes, please join in with the exchanges because 
believe me they are the very best and quickest way to learn by printing 
and doing editions and receiving examples of other people's work.

Claude Aimee Villeneuve lives in Toronto, but she is presently in 
Chicago.  I will send your email address to her....and there are others 
too.


>Finally one last question for anyone who cares to offer advice, if you were 
>just starting out in printmaking what would you have wished someone would 
>have told you before you found out the hard way?


1.  "Why didn't I find this site sooner!!!!!"

2.  Buy the best tools, the most suitable wood for woodblock, the best 
suitable papers and the best inks your can afford. 
  
3.  Buy a good instruction book (there are suggestions and chapters on 
the Baren site) or workshop which I see you already have in hand.

Baren has a wonderful encylopedia of all answers to all questions on 
woodblock printing both in oil ink and traditional hanga (watercolour) so 
work your way through the Baren site:

http:barenforum.org/index.html

You won't regret it.  Your mailbox will be full this week!!!! 

Believe me you aren't isolated if you belong to Baren.
Welcome,

Jan
Western Australia.
  



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From: Barbara Mason <barbaramason45#yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 06:45:18 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Baren 21368] Re: New member 



John,Matt Brown is in New Hampshire and I know he does teach. You
might contact him, His website is www.ooloopress.com and all of
his work is done in moku hanga. There are others and someone will
no doubt let you know. The problem with people answering is that
not everyone reads all the messages every day, sometimes people
get busy and just delete them unread......I have done it, I
admit. Especially when I have been away and have 357 emails to
read. "All shina" plywood is a good starting place. It gives
reasonably good detail, especially if you seal it with a mixture
of 1/2 spar varnish and 1/2 thinner. Just mix this up and rub it
on the sanded wood with a rag. Let dry and then sand lightly with
very fine sandpaper. Then you are ready to go. 

By all means use both sides of the wood. You rarely have any problem 
with this wood warping. Get the thicker boards, not the thinner one, at
least 3/8". Try www.immclains.com for this wood, it is reasonable
here. 

We do appreciate you buying from the baren mall for tools
and other things as the baren itself makes 10% on these sales and
it funds the site with a few pennies left over. Cherry is used in
Japan, any hardwood will work. We have people who swear by Maple,
poplar. etc. The harder the wood, the harder to carve but the
finer the lines. I would use the all shina for your first prints.

Get a feel for it before using the hard woods. The small round
circles are from the baren and called baren suji, or marks. I am
usually trying to avoid them so someone else will have to tell
you how to get them on purpose. 

If you can come to the summit it will be worth the best class as 
all the baren people who are serious will be there! It is our very 
first and also only real time meeting, the closest thing was a 
workshop in Victoria several years ago that Dave Bull attended but 
only a few were there. It will be a week where you will learn all 
the tricks, so come if you can. I have been a printmaker for 20 years 
and doing woodblock with all the rest for about 5. I think perseverence 
and enthusiasm are the two things you need the most. Next is the
ability to take what you like from each process and make it fit
what you do. 

Nothing is written in stone....so just do your work
and learn from those a bit better technically. I was way too
serious when I was younger, I thought all the "rules" were
unbreakable and that the printmaking gods would get me if I
changed anything. I have relaxed a lot!Welcome to Baren!

Best to
you,Barbara Mason, mall manager

>Jsf73#aol.com wrote: I would like to know if there are any
>members in the Toronto area, or even wider afield  to include all
>southern Ontario, southern Quebec, western or northern New York
>even Vermont, Ohio, Michigan.... who would offer a week-long
>course in printmaking. I read in the archives Claude Aimee is
>from Montreal but havent been able to find an email address to
>write.
>
>I suppose the Baren's Summit would have been great for me to
>attend if I had known about it earlier, and had some previous
>experience. I must say baren members are very lucky indeed to
>have such venues to share knowledge. Could someone tell me if a
>person with no experience could attend the summit? Is it always
>held in Kansas (just in case I can attend next years)?

>John Furr 



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From: "Jean Womack" <jeaneger#jeaneger.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 09:33:15 -0700
Subject: [Baren 21369] Re:   Baren Digest V23 #2201 

Welcome, John Furr,
You might enjoy the Baren Summit better if you had some experience actually
making woodblock prints.  A quasi-Baren summit is held each summer at the
workshop of Graham Scholes.  He gives two one-week sessions on hanga
printmaking called "Bootcamp."  It's quite an intense experience because we
call work from about 10 am to 10 pm.  The cost is very reasonable for that
kind of a workshop and Victoria, BC is beautiful.  His workshop sometimes
fills up, but it's worth a try to ask if there's more room. Here's the URL:
http://www.woodblock.info/bootcamp/

Jean Womack


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From: "Bill H. Ritchie, Jr." <ritchie#seanet.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 09:55:11 -0700
Subject: [Baren 21370] New member 

John Furr wrote:


>Finally one last question for anyone who cares to offer advice, if you were
>just starting out in printmaking what would you have wished someone would
>have told you before you found out the hard way?


Dear John -

I was just starting out in printmaking in 1962, and I wish my teacher had
required the reading of 2 books: Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction" and Ivins' "Prints and Visual Communications."

If he had, I probably would have been dismayed and confused (as a Junior in
a rural college in Washington state). But it may have given me the idea that
there's actually a philosophy of printmaking and if I gave it some lengthy
consideration I might have understood my own passion for printmaking better.

Today, for example, I study a book that has not been written; title it "The
Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction". If Benjamin and Ivins were
still alive (in a way they are because of their mechanically-reproduced
books), they would probably inform us that printmaking today still deserves
the passionate practice it gets, but some of the worrisome elements would
diminish.

For example, the practice of editioning, numbering, etc. as though by laws
that lie outside the arts.

Thanks for the opportunity to reflect on this, John.

- - Bill

Professional Career Site: www.seanet.com/~ritchie
First Emeralda Portal Site: www.artsport.com
Bill's Virtual Art Gallery & e-commerce Site: www.myartpatron.com
Experimental Free Site: www.freeyellow.com/members/videoprint
Snail Mail: 500 Aloha #105, Seattle 98109
e-mail: ritchie#seanet.com


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From: Julio.Rodriguez#walgreens.com
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 11:46:58 -0500
Subject: [Baren 21371] Re: new member, goats & sheep and a new image by dan dew 


There are new new year card prints up on the website by Liz Horton and 
Marilynn Smith.
http://www.skokienet.org/bandits/jcrstuff/blacksheep/snames.html

Also a wonderful new image by Daniel Dew is up on the Show & Tell 
page...enjoy.
http://barenforum.org/messageboard/guestbook.html


Welcome to John Furr and all other new members...

John...I second the postings from Jan & Barbara....checkout the 
barenforum.org website for all the how-to stuff...David Bull put up a 
number of pages that explain the whole process in detail. You can also go 
to avid's website and follow thru a step-by-step making of some of his 
prints. Once you get playing around and start doing...checkout the 
"one-point" lessons in our site...these are full of detail info...I go 
back to them over and over...they are great.

You can cut a solid block on both sides but it cannot be too thin a block 
or it may warp on you...3/4" is probably the safest unless you are using 
plywood...usually only the "color" blocks are those carved on both sides 
for efficiency...also if the different color areas are small or far 
apart....you can cut them on the same side of the block and/or even cut 
separate set of kento marks for registering different color areas on the 
same side of the block......David does this quite often in his elaborate 
prints to cut down on the number of blocks used.

The must important thing is to get doing ! Like we like to say.... Cut ! 
Print !

The Summit is open to everyone.....beginner and pro, oily or hanga...there 
will be many "hanga" beginners there, it will be a great opportunity to 
see & do and interchange ideas and techniques. While not a formal 
class/workshop, there will be lot of printing and doing going on.  I 
highly recommend it...... it's free and it's not that much farther south 
than Ohio/Michigan... 

thanks....Julio Rodriguez (Skokie, Illinois) 


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From: Julio.Rodriguez#walgreens.com
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 12:08:28 -0500
Subject: [Baren 21372] Re: New member

John, forgot to give you the link for the baren-suji technique.....this is 
one of the best descriptions I have read....if you have access to the book 
by son Toshi Yoshida, he's got a whole chapter on effects created by the 
use of the baren and other materials. (the explanation on bare-suji 
technique is about 1/2 way down the page on the link below).

Did you know you had to be able to sing in order to be a good 'hanga' 
printmaker ?
Check it out as described by master Hiroshi Yoshida...  {;-)

http://www.woodblock.com/encyclopedia/entries/011_07/chap_4c.html

I have also tried creating special effects by holding the baren up on it's 
edge..so only the very edge of the tool leaves a mark on the paper...you 
can hold the tool in this position while following the circular or zig-zag 
patterns across the paper to create effects similar to the Kotondo prints 
in your samples. 

thanks...Julio Rodriguez


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End of Baren Digest V23 #2202
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