Thursday, June 13, 2013

Do Red Dots Make You Green with Envy?

Art pieces that recently found forever homes.
 
These paintings and prints were recently purchased by some astute and sophisticated folks with very good taste. 

Thank you collectors!

If you are thinking, "Hey, I wanted that!" about one of the prints, you can have one too! Contact me to talk about adding one to your home.

If you are thinking that same thing about a painting, well, you can't have that exact one. But you could have an original of your very own. Join the auctions on facebook or Daily Paintworks to see what paintings are available for you.

(You can see a preview of upcoming paintings on the HP Brushworks blog.)

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

A Jigsaw That Came Together


Marsh Spring
© 2013 Hannah Phelps
jigsaw relief, edition of 10, 4.5" x 11"


After another couple of days of work, this edition is done!

I tweaked some of the colors and if you compare the print above with the proof I showed you in the last post, you can see that I adjusted some of the shapes too.

I am using a different type of paper than I usually do. This is a Japanese paper called Kinwashi. It is nice and thin, so it was easy to transfer the image with my trusty wooden spoon. It also has small, stiff fibers in it. I don’t know why, but it does give an extra texture to a design that might end up looking a bit flat. I had to watch out when I printed it though - a couple of them gave me splinters!

From a painting I created long ago - maybe 2009 - to this print. Not a quick process, but a worthwhile one!

Monday, June 3, 2013

Grey Matter, Now In Color

Block and proof on newsprint.

Remember the weird pile of grey stuff I showed you a few weeks ago? I can now show you what it is and what I am doing with it.

The substance itself is a very pliable relief printmaking material called soft kut. I don’t know exactly what it is - it feels rubbery.

The softness is great for two things. First of all, it takes less strength to carve an image into soft kut than in wood or even linoleum. So if you, say, have an arm injury, maybe you can still make some prints.




 Block pulled apart so you can see that each color is a little piece.


It is also ridiculously easy to cut a block into pieces. A zillion little tiny pieces. Plus, the stuff bends and stretches, which means it can be finagled back together again.
 

  Close up of block pieces.


The first jigsaw I ever printed was using this stuff. It was a jigsaw and a reduction color print.

But for this one (and a print I showed you a few weeks ago), I kept them to one layer and added a white-line element to the design.

Traditional white-lines use woodblocks and watercolor and are “inked” with a brush. (Remember this post about how I make white-line woodcuts?)

For the soft kut white-lines, I use rollers and waterbased printmaking inks. (Specifically, I use Akua intaglio, in case you are interested.)

The little shapes are individually inked and then reassembled. Then the entire image is printed at one time by laying a piece of paper on the block and rubbing it with a wooden spoon.
 
Each color needs its own roller. I took this photo after 
I cleaned up and put plastic wrap over the ink and rollers.

This print isn’t finished. Because of all the little pieces, it has already taken two solid days of mixing ink and "proofing", or making test prints. Now I am in the evaluation stage - I have the proofs and I am deciding what to do next. I will post the final version of the print once I have one!