Chickadee - relief block engraving (hand-coloured)

 

Continuing the addition to my small songbirds of the boreal forest series of engraved surfaces that began with a small study of a red-breasted nuthatch click here I have a new work to share.

This time it's a black-capped chickadee.

This particular study like the former print again echoes the bird placement among tree foliage and the inclusion of hand colouring after drying of oil relief ink on paper (printed from the block). 

 The chickadee print is slightly wider but the same height compared to the nuthatch in block size. It is 6.25 x 9 cm (2.5 x 3.5 inches). To date I have printed 10 good images on heavier italian milled cotton rag paper. It will be an open edition so I can print more as needed off the block.

I won't go into written detail about process with a lot of words since it has been described several times in earlier posts found by using the search word engraving. Instead I will show photos of stages of creation that visually describe the process I use.

tracing from a basic soft lead pencil sketch and transfer to block surface

pencil sketch then had black permanent marker over top

a wash of thinned india ink was put over the marker image 

photo shows early stages of engraving using a scorper blade (top) and a spitsticker blade (side). After this photo I decided to cut incidental marks to create foliage

a progress proof on japanese paper

marker pigment removed using acetone

inked block on the press bed with runner bars on either side that paper will set on top

block surface inked and ready to print

adding watercolour wash during hand-colour stage

the final result

nuthatch and chickadee engravings on paper

I was recently gifted some damaged wood pieces by a fellow engraver (boxwood and maple) that I had cut by a local cabinet maker using a bandsaw to yield me a range of smaller blocks that were usable. I just hand sand the block edges to square them since the end-grain is delicate and requires special care for cutting into blocks from larger pieces.

small two block landscape linocut with additional colour applied by hand

 

Last week I took a couple of small pieces of battleship gray linoleum that were left over from a past project and used these to create a small colour landscape relief print. 

Referencing a couple of source photographs I had taken during a river walk a couple years ago I made a sketch on paper (first photo below). This was transferred onto tracing paper and reduced to a silhouette (second photo). I traced the silhouette image in reverse by flipping the tracing over top of graphite paper positioned onto the piece of lino that would become the key block. Then I darkened the pencil by drawing with waterproof sharpie marker over the pencil silhouette. Detailing in the foreground and some indications of forms that light would define (shoreline, path and long grass and indication of flowering plants) were brought out by drawing these on the solid black using a white pencil crayon and fine tip white ink gelli pen.  

The size of the linoleum blocks determined what could be achieved in carving within the dimensions of 2.75 x 3.5 inches. Some of the fine details were only achievable by using magnification and use of a palm grip micro cutter and a couple of wood engraving blades during the carving process.

When carving was complete I rolled oil based black relief printing ink across the surface, set the block on the press bed and put a piece of inexpensive subi paper over top. A thin piece of smooth masonite panel was set over top the paper. But before advancing the press bed to pass under the roller I adjusted the gauge posts raise the roller to accommodate the block, paper and masonite based on the overall height of all elements stacked on one another and deliver a gentle pressure to make a proof print on paper. 

After several days of letting the proof dry I put tracing paper over it and sketched in shapes of clouds I thought would add interest in the background sky. I decided to also allow for minor reflection of clouds in the water (mirror effect). Again, I traced the sketch in reverse onto the second block, used permanent marker over the pencil lines and carved away the surface linoleum outside of the black shapes (clouds and area in the water below the horizon line).    

I then mixed a blue hue from oil based relief printing ink. This was printed onto another sheet of subi. When the ink had developed a skin after 24 hours (I added a small dot of a drying medium to the ink) I  placed the key block (inked and ready to print) in place, put the proof on the pins and set it over the block (printed blue ink side face down) and ran it through the press. This allowed me to see if the registration was good and how the black and blue worked together.

It was at this point I remembered using a gradient ink blend on my brayer to create a dramatic sky effect in an earlier print project and I decided to see how it would work for this study. This involved placing dabs of ink on my glass ink rolling surface (darker blue on top, white in the middle and blue ink again below this). The brayer was rolled several times so that the inks mixed into one another at their edge points and created a gradation effect that was rolled onto the second block. (I set some scrap pieces of equal height lino on either side of the block to start and end my ink rolls when it was transferred to the block surface and this delivered a pretty consistant effect).

 

I could have continued cutting more blocks to introduce other colours to the foreground grasses, path and left side foliage but since this was a rather small print size I decided at this point there would be less stress if additional colour was applied using brush and wet media pigments to these small areas of negative space.