Today's postings

  1. [Baren 45126] City of the world (Guadalupe Victorica)
  2. [Baren 45127] Baren Member blogs: Update Notification (Blog Manager)
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Message 1
From: Guadalupe Victorica
Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:10:18 GMT
Subject: [Baren 45126] City of the world
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Maria the blocks look awesome. I am impressed at the perspective of some of them. They make me want to do perspectives which I almost never do.
Saludos from Mexico,

Guadalupe
www.printsforpeacemexico.blogspot.com

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Postings made on [Baren] members' blogs
over the past 24 hours ...

Subject: More on Paper Flattening
Posted by: Annie B

As I mentioned in a recent previous post, I've been happy with the Shikoku White paper I've been using for the Loaded series except for the fact that it's had a tendency to wrinkle and/or become wavy as I work with it. Check out that previous post for some excellent advice from people in the comments section.

 Here's a closeup photo I took of the prints hanging in my studio after being just air dried:

PaperProblems

There are four different prints here, each in an edition of 7 or 8, and you can see that each print seems to have a characteristic wave or curl through the edition.

I tried to flatten the prints here in my studio, placing them between boards with weight on top, I got enhanced rippling plus some puckering. (A commenter to the previous post tells me that this is called "cockling" in Britain.) I felt really frustrated, so I decided to seek professional help -- I called Liz Chalfin, owner/director of Zea Mays Printmaking Studio where I teach. Liz recommended that I try their forced-air print dryer.

A forced-air print dryer, first developed at Crown Point Press, uses corrugated cardboard stacked alternately with dense smooth cardboard (Upson Board) that can be interleaved with damp prints. The whole stack is then put under pressure and air is forced through the corrugations to dry the prints. I neglected to take a photo of the Zea Mays dryer, but it looks a lot like this photo of the forced air dryer setup at Crown Point. The dryer at Zea Mays can hold 15 prints at a time. Frankly, I was skeptical, but after running a test with a few prints that didn't make it into an edition I was sold.

So yesterday I brought 14 dampened prints to Zea Mays, and this morning Joyce Silverstone and I unloaded the dryer to see what had happened (it takes two people to load and unload -- see the Crown Point article). I had 12 prints without cockling! I call that a success. Here's a photo for comparison:


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This item is taken from the blog woodblock dreams.
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Subject: Carrying on with the goldeneye print
Posted by: Sherrie Y


After the light blue background step shown in the last post, I felt a need for something more.... interesting... in this print. Clearly this is going to be a duck-on-water sort of thing. It needs something special. Like, I dunno.... texture, maybe. Perhaps something like wood grain.

Yeah. Wood grain.

Off I went to see Ves, the carpenter at our neighborhood lumberyard, lino block under one arm and one of the prints under the other. He understood immediately what I was after, and reached straight into the scrap bin for a gorgeous piece of oak-veneer plywood. The grain fell in exactly the right place. It was meant to be, so Ves trimmed the oak board to the dimensions of my linoleum block and I toddled back to the studio with two boards under my arm.

The oak was pretty tough to carve, so I was glad I didn't need to do much detail. I just cleared out the space for the duck and its reflection and was ready to go. I used three small rollers (as opposed to the single large roller, which I had already returned to its owner) to produce a blend and printed away.

You saw a corner of it at that stage.


I liked the grain but it was a bit too pronounced for where this image is headed, so I inked up the lino block with a transparent medium blue and printed that over the entire print again. Got that? Solid from the lino, blend from the wood, solid from the lino again. The difference was subtle, but I think it was the right decision.


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This item is taken from the blog Brush and Baren.
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Subject: From my home state, Nevada USA to Tasmania in Australia
Posted by: Maria

This contribution from Sarah Chvilicek in Reno, Nevada USA. For those who wonder, Reno is the northern counterpart of my home Las Vegas. Those two cities account for most of the population in the state of Nevada, home to mountains, glorious desert valleys and long peaceful roads under clean open skies.

Here is Sarah's city block:


Melanie Simon in Longley, Tasmania, Australia has this to say about her contribution:
I grew up on the edge of a city and now live out beyond the fringe, but still close enough to interact with it when I want; the best of both worlds.  Our city, Hobart, though a capital is relatively small and interactive with nature, squeezed as it is between a mountain and a river but I feel that larger cities become obsessed with themselves and tend to forget their necessary connection with the environment, trying to force everyone and everything to conform.  We would be well served to remember what was there before, embrace biological and elemental systems and work with them in a mutually beneficial way to create more fertile and diverse places.  My image is of moths native to our great southern forests who manage to flit in and remind us?

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This item is taken from the blog MCPP Puzzle Prints.
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