relief print part II

I have cut a second block that will define the sky and reflection of sky in the foreground pool.

For this I decided to use a product called "easy to cut linoleum" which is actually more like a smooth vinyl type material and about the same thickness as battleship or golden cut lino.
This product gets an ok rating from yours truly, but it came to my attention that that shaving bits had a tendency to stay attached at the end of cut. so it really works best if you use sharp cutting blade tips. There was an immediate improvement when I sharpened the blade of the v-gouge and U-gouge knives and it helped to curve the blade upward and out at the end of the cut stroke.

You will notice in the photo below (block on the left side) that areas were cut away where I did not want blue ink to remain like the sandbar and some small ripples in water towards the middle area of the block. Small wispy cloud shapes were added in the sky and also in the bottom where there would be the reflection.

Fig.1 shows a test proof of the blue (printed using Speedball water based ink) printed onto a piece of Printmaster paper. The three holes you see at the top are from my registration board which has a flat three-hole punch attached at one end. This keeps the paper in position each time the inked block and paper are run through the printing press (fig. 2). The block itself is set into a hole cut into matboard (created by first tracing around the block perimeter in pencil and then carefully cutting with xacto blade and removing the piece. I trimmed this cardboard brace so that the outer dimensions are the same size as the sheet of printing paper. The block which is set back into the depression will be slightly higher than the brace surface and when paper is set over top and another thin piece of cardboard placed on top it is run under the rollers of the press, which produce a gentle pressure onto the cardboard which creates a good even contact between the inked block and the paper.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

The next stage was to print the black keyblock over the blue to check for accurate registration of blocks. The black image should line up exactly with the edges of the blue print.

Decided at this point to remove more from the surface of the keyblock to allow for an indication of foliage. For this stage I used my magnifying swing arm lens and a couple of wood engraving gouges. The size of these cuts would be considered pock marks when viewed at actual size but they appear to create an interesting indication of leaves (second photo below is a blow up of a small section). The next few stages will involve creating one block to print a colour for the background foliage and a block for adding colour into the sand bar and pool in the centre of the print.

Here is the block being cut with a wood engraving tool tip.