Posted by at 12:47 AM, September 6, 2005
I carved this over the summer as an anniversary present for my husband. It's a creative redrawing of the Norman Keep at Castle Cardiff. Bill tweaked it from a friend's photo to make it look more like his business logo. Perfect for my purposes! The castle is Bill's, the bucalic scene is mine.
The trick has been to keep him from seeing it before the 9th. I'm fairly confident he won't look in here. ;->
Woodcut on Baltic birch, 9"x12". I utilized the direction of the grain for the cloud action, but it fought me all the rest of the block. I'm wondering if Belinda DelPesco's technique of staining the block then using polyurithane wouldn't have helped with all the chipping. I may try that for the next one.
Ellen ... the reason your photos are not showing up is that you are using blank spaces in the filename, like this:
[castle - schuylerhouses.jpg]
The blog software can't figure this out properly, and I have to go in and fix them manually. Please use names like this, or something similar ...
[castle-schuylerhouses.jpg]
Thanx ...
Nice print, Ellen! It sounds like the chipping tendencies of plywood drove you nuts. That's been my experience, too, that the chipping is the one big drawback of plywood. I've learned to use a much lighter touch than I was initially inclined to use and to go deep only after doing a test print to see where the depth was needed. I haven't tried sealing the block, but a lot of people seem to think it's a big help.