Baren Digest Sunday, 26 January 2003 Volume 22 : Number 2108 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Shireen Holman Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 09:50:52 -0500 Subject: [Baren 20549] Dave and John's print I'm a bit slower than everyone else, but I finally looked at the whole process of Dave and John's print. It's fascinating to watch each impression, and the final result is a beautiful print. Somehow I kept expecting a moon to appear behind the smoke or steam before it all got coloured, but in the end it's moonlight without the moon. Thanks for showing it to us! Shireen *********************************************** Shireen Holman, Printmaker and Book Artist email: shireenh#earthlink.net http://www.shireenholman.com *********************************************** ------------------------------ From: Mike Lyon Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 09:26:11 -0600 Subject: [Baren 20550] Re: Baren Digest Teeny Tiny >Mellissa Read-Devine wrote: >http://www.mlyon.com/prints/relief/teeny_tiny.htm -- >What is the best wood to cut with such fine detail? I have only ever >engraved on end grain hard wood when working small, but would like to try >the 'plank' sometime. >Mellissa Read-Devine >Tennyson, Sydney, Australia >www.depicture.com.au Dear Mellissa, There probably isn't any 'best' wood. I used Appalachian Cherry because it is inexpensive and good for my use. I don't imagine that Sydney will have much Appalachian Cherry (here it's cheaper than the good cherry because it has lots of knots and wrinkles in the grain making it more difficult to work for furniture). You'll have suitable cherry there in Australia, too, I imagine. My detail wasn't really very fine, even though the finished prints give that impression because of the number of overlapping layers -- there appear to be much finer details than really exist -- remember that I was just shaving down the size of fairly large islands for the most part from one printing to the next, not leaving lots of tiny fine lines or dots... Cherry has enough open-grain in plank-cut pieces to allow you to print wood-grain if you want to and not so much that the grain will print if you don't (depends on brushing direction during printing, mostly). Cherry is relatively hard, but it cuts very cleanly and the fibers adhere stongly to one another so that you can carve very sharp peaks (print very fine lines) which will hold together during subsequent printing. If I don't require very fine carving, then I prefer basswood planks (maybe you call it limewood?) as it is much easier to carve and holds up well enough to allow me to print more than enough copies for my purposes (usually about 50 sheets or so)... Mike ------------------------------ From: "marilynn smih" Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 08:40:50 -0800 Subject: [Baren 20551] Re: Baren Digest V22 #2107 Mike, I too enjoyed your minatures. You may be process oriented, a preplanner, a photo realist and working from photos but i find the work alive and creative. Wonderful stuff and thanks for sharing. Oh David over there in Japan, your show looks wonderful, I enjoyed your sharing too. Mariilynn, still enjoying that cool baja sea breeze ------------------------------ From: ArtfulCarol#aol.com Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 16:52:52 EST Subject: [Baren 20552] Swap shop Hi, I just received my 5 prints from Swap Shop and they are beauties from the likes of Maria Arango, David Bull, Diana Lakes, Phillip Smith, and Lezle Williams. If you are not in the regular Baren Swap because of the number of prints needed I highly recommend that you be part of the Swap Shop. Click onto Swap Shop on the Baren site for all the info. Thank you to Jim Mundie for organizing it. (Jim, I hope you dont mind me drumming up business) Carol Lyons Irvington, NY ------------------------------ From: "Gilda Zimmerling" Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 14:33:11 -0800 Subject: [Baren 20553] layer separation I love your teeny tiny prints. I do not know if perhaps i missed this way back when or if this is your trade secret . When using photographs for your prints how do you break down each color and do you use a certain software program to separate them into layers. ------------------------------ From: "Jean Eger Womack" Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 14:41:51 -0800 Subject: [Baren 20554] Re: Baren Digest V22 #2107 Mike, I have seen Francesco Clemente prints http://www.crownpoint.com/artists/clemente/index2.html carved with that method you show in your closeup, http://www.mlyon.com/images/madonna_detail.jpg at Crown Point Press in San Francisco. The paintings for the blocks were done here in the States, then the paintings sent to Japan to be rendered in woodblock. There were so many fine gradations that I initially thought they were watercolors, until it was explained to me that they were all done with woodblock. I myself have tried a crude verson of color printing which uses CMYK (process colors of cyan blue, magenta, yellow and black) overlaps. I could have gone on with that style because I got some great effects. I planned the print in the computer and then separated the colors and carved separate blocks for each. However, that method depends on gradations in each color, not a flat color, which is what I did. So I guess if you could keep track of it, you could do that. However the question is WHY bother? Why not just use a real electronic printer instead of trying to approximate it in woodcut? Why not use woodcut to show the wood and the beauty of you own mark with the knife? Jean Womack ------------------------------ From: "Robert Canaga Gallery" Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 17:19:32 -0800 Subject: [Baren 20555] Workshop with Walt padgett I just got home from a two day workshop at the U of O here in Eugene done by Walt Padgett, a member of Baren. Wonderful work! Here is his web site http://www.padgettart.com/Category.asp?Category=3DPrints I am buying "Red Pajamas over Fuji" I learned a great deal and had my students do a two block print Friday night with what I learned! RC ------------------------------ From: Mike Lyon Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 19:24:23 -0600 Subject: [Baren 20556] Re: Baren Digest V22 #2107 At 02:41 PM 1/25/2003 -0800, you wrote: >Mike, >I have seen Francesco Clemente prints >http://www.crownpoint.com/artists/clemente/index2.html carved with that >method you show in your closeup, >http://www.mlyon.com/images/madonna_detail.jpg >at >Crown Point Press in San Francisco. The paintings for >the blocks were done here in the States, then the paintings sent to Japan to >be rendered in woodblock. There were so many fine gradations that I >initially thought they were watercolors, until it was explained to me that >they were all done with woodblock. I myself have tried a crude verson of >color printing which uses CMYK (process colors of cyan blue, magenta, yellow >and black) overlaps. I could have gone on with that style because I got >some great effects. I planned the print in the computer and then separated >the colors and carved separate blocks for each. However, that method >depends on gradations in each color, not a flat color, which is what I did. >So I guess if you could keep track of it, you could do that. However the >question is WHY bother? Why not just use a real electronic printer instead >of trying to approximate it in woodcut? Why not use woodcut to show the >wood and the beauty of you own mark with the knife? >Jean Womack No reason why not... just depends on your own interests, I suppose... I'm interested in patterns and tilings and all those abstract layers which build the images are so INTERESTING to me... And the products which drop off at the end of the process are much more interesting than the photos. And these "photo-realist" as people are calling them, woodcuts seem to me to be very logical next steps along my own exploration. You wanna show off the beauty of the wood? I do that all the time, but I do it with the wood itself. Sometimes I use the graing of the wood in the images, but that sort of image making technique is honestly the aestetic of others. I have to follow my own mind and heart, not theirs. All this goes to show there are no stupid questions, only stupid answerers!!! :-) Mike Mike Lyon mailto:mikelyon#mlyon.com http://www.mlyon.com ------------------------------ End of Baren Digest V22 #2108 *****************************