Wood block printing contextual

Wood block printing contextual

Hand carved blocks layered on a 6" x 6" hand torn piece of mulberry paper with leaf inclusions. Printed with oil-based relief inks.

Multiple hand-carved blocks layered on a 7" x 9" hand torn piece of Japanese unryu paper. Printed with oil-based relief inks. The first image is of the print, the rest are process pictures to show some of the materials used in creating this original print.

This painting Mega Myth by Melissa Brown uses 3 different techniques; a fabric staining, wood block printing and stencils to arrive at a well composed and enchanting image.

Orangeman-original woodcut monoprint.
Hand-carved blocks layered on a 6" x 8" hand-torn piece of kitakata paper. Printed with oil-based relief inks on a small etching press.

This website contains a variety of woodblock prints that include similar layering techniques that I've used. The images were protected so I've provided a link address below

http://printsy.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html


While researching layering wood block prints I came across these beautiful wood block prints on another blogger's site that goes by the name of purple podded peas!

Ralph Kiggell 1997 Pool Diver water-based woodblock print 35 cm x 60 cm

wood block printing

This was a 2 week project. The brief was to choose a story from your life, take a sentence form that story and illustrate it through wood block pints. Eventually I decided to work from the childhood memory of when I thought I saw Santa Claus!
I was about 5 or 6. It was Christmas Eve night. I woke up in the middle of the night and heard noise in the kitchen.( the kitchen was where Santa left our toys) I ran down the hall thrilled. I was going to catch Santa in the act! We were always trying to catch Santa( hiding in the hotpress for hours etc) I ran into the kitchen to find my uncle Denis assembling a yellow and black tricycle while my parents were at the kitchen tabe writing a cheque. 'Quick', they gushed. ' He's just gone out to get the rest of the toys'. 'We're helping him put everything together.' I raced back up the hall to my bed, passing the front door as I ran. I could see the red lights ( obviously of my uncle's car) through the frosted pane of the front door. I was convinced this was Rudolph's nose shining. I was terrified! I hopped into bed full of nerves and excitement. I'd nearly been spotted by Santa!

After chatting with my tutor I decided to make a wood block print by layering various images/memories  that this story evoked for me. I have vivid memories of the tricycle handlebars and the black wheels. I remember the red light shining through the frosted pane of the front door. I also remember the nervous terror that Santa might catch me up and tearing back up the hall!

Next I experimented with positive and negative space. I drew out each image and experimented with black and white colouring of each image. I had been used to dry point etching where you drew the image into the acetate. Wood block printing is the opposite. You carve out the negative space. This took me a while to grasp!

I carved out the wood blocks and I was ready to print! I started printing in basic primary colours just to experiment with layering to see which images should be layered onto which. I decided to put the date of the memory in to tie the 4 images together. I put a frame on the images so that  it would be like looking into the image.

Examples of some of the combinations of prints I made, again playing around with colouring and layering. I put quite a bit of transparency into the oil based printing inks so that each image would be clear and to evoke notions of distant memories.

Silk screen printing April-May 2012

Turraheen-maps, census and photographs of the old creamery

I made silk screen prints of old maps of where I'm from. I also included census transcripts of my great grandfather's family that lived in the family homestead in 1911. A huge part of my identity comes from where I'm from, my family and where I was brought up. I've lived all over the place and I love coming home to Turraheen. It's where my family have lived for generations so I have very strong connections with the place. I added a 2012 census under the original 1911 census to convey a sense of the generations living on. I also used some of the images of the disused creamery across the road. Onec the hub of the community the creamery has been empty for over 20 years. I played around with all of the images, layering them on top of each other, beside each other etc. I also made some posterisation images of the broken window of the creamery, trying to bring it back to life again.

I reduced the size of the map to only focus in on the main areas of importance-the school, the bridge, the well and the creamery and I tore the census to reduce it to minimal information as well. I felt I had too much info on the previous prints.

more playing around with colours and the placing of images

posterisation of broken creamery window  printed onto linen cloth to  convey the cloth bags that animal meal  was sold in at the creamery

I printed images of the creamery, census and map of Turraheen on a variety of materials to symbolise the various materials that were used in the creamery-plastic fertiliser bags, hession, canvas. Had I had more time I would love to have made some silk screens on metal and wood. 

posterisation of the broken creamery window

playing around with where I'm going to position the various images-map, census, creamery images

I made a strip of prints of the map of Turraheen on a strip of linen canvas, again to evoke memories of the linen canvas bags that carried meal and food that was sold in the creamery store.

Print done on newsprint. Again playing around with placing /overlapping the images.

A snapshot of my studio wall-a combination of silk  screen prints on paper, canvas, hession and plastic

my studio wall

Silk Screening-Contextual Influences

Robert Rausenberg


I admire Rausenberg’s work. I like the way he combines all types of print on the one piece of work. He used collage and atypical materials such as printing with a tyre. Rauschenberg was keenly interested in the iconography of American popular culture. He eschewed the emotional style of the Abstract Expressionists without losing the latter’s expressiveness by developing a style that stressed collage and used atypical materials like house paint, as well as techniques such painting with a tire dipped in ink. He expanded his collages by incorporating three-dimensional objects, which he referred to as “combines.” This groundbreaking technique contributed to the course of modern art and creative expression. The works are sometimes called Neo-Dada. Rauschenberg’s fascination with popular imagery and his anything goes aesthetic indisputably influenced Pop Art, which would mimic the look of popular culture as opposed to Rauschenberg’s more subjective renderings.

Rauschenberg used images of current events gathered from magazines and newspapers for his 1964 collage Retroactive 1 (1964). A large press photograph of John F. Kennedy speaking at a televised news conference was the source for this screen print on canvas. He juxtaposed the image of Kennedy with another photo silkscreen of a parachuting astronaut. The overlapping, and seemingly disparate, composition creates a colorful visual commentary on a media-saturated culture struggling to come to grips with the television era.

“I don’t want a picture to look like something it isn’t. I want it to look like something it is. And I think a picture is more like the real world when it’s made out of the real world.”

“A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil, and fabric.”

--Robert Rauschenberg in Susan Hapgood’s Neo-Dada, Redefining Art 1958-1962, p.18

I identify with Rausenberg’s use of everyday objects as his tools. I tried making silk prints onto black & white plastic bags, hession and linen bags. This was to represent the bags that the animal meal was sold in at the creamery. Had I had more time with this project I would have liked to silk screen onto metal. I also would like to have combined the silk screens with monoprints.

Oil and silkscreen ink on canvas

Robert Rauschenberg, Currents, 1970

Robert Rauschenberg 
Retroactive I, 1964,