In the Mail Today

I bought two small vintage glass bottles, and already I've put a couple tiny house linocuts inside.  Behind the distorted glass, the houses look quite a bit like butterflies or little bugs.

Two Things I Miss

The snow, a little, because I liked how the forest poked out of it.

And brother, a lot, because he's swell.

One melted and the other is soaking up sun far away in the south while being studious.

 His curious artistic endeavors can be viewed online at: 

https://www.behance.net/SethFite

...and on this delightful SCAD student page:
https://studentpages.scad.edu/~sefite20/index.html

"For the Party" In Color

All Gone

Snugly cupped inside a footprint, a brown leaf prompted me down a trail stamped by a lone set of hooves. 

On either side of the road were endless treasures, and a few were unhidden.  Breathlessly I followed them deeper into the forest.

I suddenly looked down and was troubled to see I had ravaged those solemn prints I was following.  They were nowhere to be seen; on my return to the wood's edge, I followed my own.  

Hand Printing

Chapter 1

The Rough Start

First of all, this is not enough ink:

Secondly, Rives BFK heavyweight paper, as much as I loved it when I had access to a heavy duty relief press machine,  is not useful to me for hand printing.

Even adding extra ink to the block and nearly breaking my wrist to rub the ink into the paper... merely produced the faded little house below.  It's a good thing he's cute, or he'd be tossed!

Finally, I printed on cheap newsprint paper... and as you can see, the thinner paper helped me print a darker house, and with much less effort.

Well, let's see.  I did order a few beautiful, thin sheets of Japanese Kitakata paper a while back...

Chapter 2

My Friend, Kitakata

The carved block, already inked, with a small sheet of Kitakata placed over top.  Ready to be rubbed with a wooden spoon or baren.

 First attempt, with small amount of pressure applied.  Resulting house is still quite light.

 With moderate pressure and a little more ink... Now we're getting somewhere!

Note: Wondering what to do with those un-carved corners and edges of your finished linocuts?   Why not cut them off to enjoy later?  They're like bread crust!  Yum.  Obviously I like to carve my scraps into houses...

And it worked out perfectly to have those little carvings on hand for today's test printing.  But... Today's work didn't stop there.  One of the other linocuts sitting on my desk kept blinking its eyes at me and I couldn't resist giving it a go...

Chapter 3

The Rabbit

And with a little more pressure...

The End (OF THE BEGINNING!!!)

A House in the Sticks