Category: Woodcut

Relief print from carved wood plate

New Year 2024

Happy New Year!

Thank you for reading my posts and looking at my pictures. I appreciate your encouragement and comments.

Here is my New Year Card for 2024.

New Year 2024: “Ascent” woodcut and collage – 5″ x 7″

I intended the image to be one of hope: of collaboration and of working together towards a higher goal. 

The main image is a woodcut on plywood. Here is work in progress:

The woodcut image is inspired by a sculpture on the wall of a building in Hoxton. The building is called “Development House” 56-64 Leonard Street. I can’t find any attribution for the sculpture and would be interested to know who the artist is, if anyone can tell me.

Technical information: The woodcut is on plywood, bought from “Great Art”on the Kingsland Road, not far from this sculpture. The ink is Schminke relief ink, applied with a roller. I printed the image by hand at my desk, using a roller and pressing the paper down with the convex side of a spoon. The paper is lightweight Thai Mulberry (45gsm) in various shades: sea grey, peppermint and natural, bought online from the “Perfect Paper Company”. The round “planets” are offcuts of marbled paper from the Wyvern Press. I cut the stars out of old sparkly wrapping paper, using a star cutter. The “Happy New Year” text is cut from a pencil eraser. Other text is from an old-fashioned printing outfit.

Printing materials

Previous New Year cards are here:

New Year 2022 – Bridges

Happy New Year! Here is my New Year Card for 2022.

“Bridges” – woodcut + watercolour, collage and printing

May 2022 be kind to us all.

In London there are many beautiful bridges.

Regents Canal
Tower bridge
Westminster Bridge

One early morning I saw them all ranged out.

London Bridges at dawn, from the South Bank, looking West

I thought of them as images of hope: so many connections, so many different ways to get across, and that glow of the sunrise on the buildings beyond!.

Westminster Bridge was my model. It took many efforts to get the design to work as a woodcut.

Design attempts

It needed a bit of glow, to echo what I had seen in the sunrise. So I used iridescent watercolour, put on before the paper was printed.

Daniel Smith iridescent watercolour
Watercolour on paper
Paper is “Hatakami” from Nepal via the Vintage Paper Company
Iridescent watercolour on Nepali paper

Here is the wood block:

“Bridge” woodblock 10cm x 15cm

I did the printing at East London Printmakers, on a cast-iron press.

The press at East London Printmakers

Then back at my desk I assembled the cards and sent them off.

"Composed on Westminster Bridge September 3, 1802 " 
by William Wordsworth

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Previous New Year cards are here:

Lake District woodcut

I made a woodcut of a valley in the Lake District in the moonlight. The hills on the skyline, right of centre, are the Langdale Pikes.

Langdale Pikes, Lake District, print from woodcut, image size 12″ x 9″

This was was made at the request of a friend, who has a house in the valley. Their house is one of those small rectangles you see, centre left, under the shadow of the hill.

Here is work in progress on the woodcut. Click to enlarge the picture.

  • Carving the houses
  • Woodblock ready to ink
  • Work area: ink ready to apply
  • Inked plate with moon
  • Applying the seal to the print

The wood is Japanese plywood, 12″ x 9″. The ink is Schmincke Aqua Linoldruck relief printing ink, ivory black. It can be cleaned off with water. The seal is a hand-carved stone seal made my friend and mentor in Japan, who also supplied the special red seal ink, and instructions for its use.

I used “Masa small sheets” Agawami Japanese paper from Intaglio Printmaker. This is thin enough to use for hand-printing but strong enough not to tear when you pull it off the woodcut. It is pure white and very even, which seemed to be apt for the moonlit scene. One side is shiny-smooth and the other is more textured. I printed on the shiny side.

Here is another print, with a crescent moon:

And here is an outtake, a mistake, which I rather like:

New Year 2021

Happy New Year!

My New Year card for 2021 shows a telephone kiosk.

New Year, 2021, “Connection”, woodcut 6″ x4″, on Japanese Kozo paper

I am of a generation for whom the telephone kiosk was, at one time in my life, an important feature of communications. You looked for them. You found them. They were either working or not. The inside smelt of old metal, coinage, leaves and urine. The phone was heavy and cold. The thick cord was twisted. You had to have the right coins. Sometimes coins jammed in the slot, or went straight through the mechanism without registering. So if you were experienced, and organised, you had a whole series of coins of different denominations ready to put in, in case the first one didn’t work. If your call was important, or if you needed to write something down, it was helpful to have a friend with you in the telephone kiosk, standing by with the coins, poised to enter them rapidly as the pips went. There was a risk-based calculation about what denomination of coin to enter, and in what order. You might enter small change first, while you worked out if the person you wanted was in, then drop in the big money for the important conversation, so that the pips did not cut you off at a critical point. You might enter a variety of change at the beginning in the hope that some of it would be returned if the call was shorter than you expected. But your money was not always returned.

Connection, Woodcut.

Above all, a telephone kiosk represented hope: the hope of connection. That’s my hope for 2021.

Also in the woodcut I put some people. These might be the three wise men, looking for hope and salvation in a humble building.

I based my woodcut on phone boxes I have encountered recently. It is a K2 phone box, like the one at Lower Marsh, Waterloo. You can tell, because it has six rows of windows.

  • Lower Marsh, Waterloo
  • Lera Voe, Shetland
  • Royal Courts of Justice
  • Aldermanbury
  • Walberswick

Here is work in progress:

  • Sketch
  • Wood carving
  • Inking
  • Watercolour gold
  • Relief ink
  • Prints drying
  • Inking

The background gold colour is, amazingly, watercolour: Daniel Smith Iridescent Gold. The red is Schmincke relief printing ink. The paper came, via friends, from “Paper Nao” in Tokyo. It is kozo paper, I think K-148, and brilliant for hand-printing. It doesn’t crinkle, it takes the colour well, and it’s really strong so it doesn’t tear when you pull it off the plate.

I like phone boxes. They appear in various of my drawings, see for example, these posts:

Some previous New Year Cards are here:

New Year 2018

Here are my greetings for the New Year, sent as cards. They are woodcuts, two plates. The orange/red colour was printed first. The black colour is the Schminke “Aquadruck” black relief ink diluted with extender kindly lent to me by Connie at East London Printmakers. Her extender was from the Caligo range, and was slightly…

New Year 2019

Happy New Year! I made a woodcut. This is a greetings card, about 7″x5″. It is from two woodblocks, one orange and one blue. Here is work in progress at East London Printmakers: In the background you see the Albion press I used for printing. It is a wonderful cast-iron machine. As well as the…

New Year Card 2020

Happy New Year! Here is my New Year Card 2020:

It’s a two-plate woodcut. I call the design “VICISSITUDES” because it shows the ups and downs of the year. The star and the sunrise are cut from a magazine, Vogue or the FT “How to Spend It” supplement, both of which contain high quality paper which cuts cleanly.

The background that looks a dull beige on the computer screen is gold paint. It glistens. It is “Schmincke Aqua Linoprint 35ml Metallics” Gold relief ink from Intaglio Printmaker. It was fun to use and very effective. The black ink is “Schmincke Aqua Linoprint Ivory Black 19 735” 120ml also from Intaglio Printmaker. The paper is Fabriano Unica from Great Art. I did this printing on the Albion Press at East London Printmakers.

  • Plate number 1 (Gold ink)
  • Plate number 2 (Black ink)
Plywood plates used to make the design “Vicissitudes” for New Year 2020.

Here is one of the cards ready for posting. I tried to get the light on it so you could see the gold ink.

New Year 2019

Happy New Year!

I made a woodcut.

IMG_0951

This is a greetings card, about 7″x5″.

It is from two woodblocks, one orange and one blue. Here is work in progress at East London Printmakers:

Orange block printed
Blue block printed on top

In the background you see the Albion press I used for printing. It is a wonderful cast-iron machine.

Albion press for relief printing
Albion press nameplate

As well as the greetings cards I tried an experiment with chine collé on Japanese paper.

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And this was an out-take that I liked:

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The inks made marvellous patterns on the glass when I was cleaning up:

Yellow and red ink, and cleaning fluid
Black and red ink, and water

Perhaps I could entitle that last one “Window into the unknown”?

Happy New Year 2019!

 

New Year 2018

Here are my greetings for the New Year, sent as cards.

They are woodcuts, two plates. The orange/red colour was printed first. The black colour is the Schminke “Aquadruck” black relief ink diluted with extender kindly lent to me by Connie at East London Printmakers. Her extender was from the Caligo range, and was slightly whitish. It seemed to work better than the Schminke version.

The gold star is punched out of some golden wrapping paper I received last year.

The paper is Fabriano Unica, cut to size on the marvellous electrical guillotine.

Happy New Year!

Tiara in the Garden

Here is a woodcut of my sister’s greyhound, Tiara.

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Tiara in the Garden

This is a reduction woodcut. That means I cut the woodblock, and made a number of prints in the yellow colour, then I cut it further, and printed the grey/brown colour.

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Printing the first colour

 

Prints from the first colour
First colour

Here is work in progress on the second colour.

 

Prints drying
Woodblock on the Albion Press
Prints drying

These are printed on the Albion press at East London Printmakers:

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Albion Press, at East London Printmakers

I mixed the colours.
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Here is the finished card:
IMG_2263

Gilded Bronze Gerfalcon

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Woodcut, after a statue seen in the British Museum “Sicily Culture and Conquest” exhibition, 24 April 2016. He stood about 12 inches high and dates from 1200AD or so.

This woodcut is done in Shminke Prussian blue AquaLino relief ink, on the marvellous Albion press at East London Printmakers. Fabriano Unica Cream paper from Great Art. Woodcut block 16cm by 11cm from Intaglio Printmaker.

Rugby Players

img_9650

Woodcut is such a great medium. It’s satisfying to cut the wood with the sharp tools. The character of woodcut allows approximation, and fast working. There’s lots that’s not quite right about this image, but I am reluctant to mess around with the blocks. I feel that the woodcut has its own language and I let it be.

Two blocks, postcard size  about 6inches by 4inches, printed with Schminke Aqua Liniprint ink using the ancient Albion Press at East London Printmakers.

After an original photograph in the Guardian newspaper 19 December 2015, by David Davies, under the headline:
“Carter’s precision thwarts Saints’ revenge bid”.

Northampton 9
Racing 92        9

The caption to the photograph reads:
“Racing’s Dan Carter attempts to flick a pass out of the back of his hand before Northampton’s Mike Hayward can drag the New Zealander to the ground”