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.