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Subject: [Forest in Summer - 16] : Nearly done ...
Posted by: Dave Bull

Continued from [Forest in Summer - 15] | Starting point of the thread is [Forest in Summer - 1] These next couple are very small areas, and won't really show effectively at this scale. First up is a rough 'dirty' gradation at the bottom of the mushroom stem: The second one is a bit more visible - a tiny smear of pigment at the top of the stem, just under the cap, Gives a nice bit of depth! [Long item has been trimmed at this point. The full blog entry can be viewed here]

This item is taken from the blog Woodblock RoundTable.
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Subject: Proofing Indigenous Ink
Posted by: Pistoles Press

So, I worked with the ink I had made from the soil on our land for the first time today by proofing up the first five trilobites I had carved. My goal was to pull some proofs in the soil ink and be able to actually use those as well to make transfers for the color blocks. Well, it was a pleasant dream anyway. It was a nice feeling anyways to begin printing with a pigment I had "made" myself. Even though I had poured off some water that had separated out in the jar when I initially ground the ink, there was a renewed skin of water on the slip and a strange orange red bloom of minerals suspended in it that I poured off before I began. Most of my suspensions are in alcohol and I mix/grind them myself from powdered pigment. This I left in water. In my regular suspensions, when I dip the spoon in to retrieve a bit of pigment, there is little resistance to the spoon and I often don't feel the pigment if the suspension is cloudy. It's not until I lift the spoon out does it become apparent that I have indeed scraped a lump of soft pigment that has fallen to the bottom of the jar. Titanium White (and all of its subsequent tinctures) is notorious for this. When I dipped the spoon in for some pigment, the mud/water suspension had the resistance of hard jello. I could tell there was a lot of settled clay body in it. I spooned a bit out along with the nori paste and went to work warming up the block. Now, I had pestled this pigment through a fine sieve but not fine enough to take the granules of sand out. The pigment had the consistency of thick yogurt but I could tell there was a bit of sand in it. I have worries that I can only pull so many prints with this before the sand begins to wear down my carving! It is Shina after all. The ink itself prints up a light tan which is pleasantly warm and has only mild whispers of olive. Sadly, it . . . [Long item has been trimmed at this point. The full blog entry can be viewed here]

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