mojo thoughts + 21st century conundrums

I think I may have my printing mojo back. It's been a while. But sometimes I think it's good to step away and do other things. It can be quite conducive to letting the creative juices percolate.

Today's carving session was musically accompanied by:

1. Holly Throsby
2. Jen Cloher
3. The Jezabels
4. Sarah Blasko
5. The Be Good Tanyas.

A fabulously talented combination of Australian and Canadian musicians indeed! And really good to do some intensive carving to. In case you ever wanted to know.

Now have you heard about all the Pinterest fuss going on? It seems the web is full of debate about Pinterest inspired copyright and digital identity crises at the moment. And here I was thinking it was just pretty eye candy. To be honest though, the first time I looked at Pinterest (about 2 weeks ago) I found one of my woodblock prints pinned there without any reference to me, the creator or to where they'd pinned it from (my shop). I was a bit annoyed when I saw that. Then after I signed up to play on Pinterest I realised that when you click on a pinned image it takes you back to the original source so you can see who owns it. Eventually. I was still cross that the original pinner hadn't taken the time to mention who owned the print though. And then on Twitter I noticed some artists saying a big thank you to people who had pinned their work because they'd receive enquiries as a result. And one person I know sold a painting due to the publicity it received on Pinterest.

Then Flickr made some moves in response to the Pinterest copyright debate. They disabled the pin function on copyright protected Flickr images.

So it seems that it's a bit of a complex situation. A real 21st century conundrum.

Any thoughts?

carving

It's been slow going these last few weeks but this morning I managed to put the first colour of this print design onto wood and start carving. I decided to rub the design onto the block with a boning tool & tracing paper instead of with carbon paper (my usual way). There are tiny little elements to this design so I need to carve carefully. One slip and the wood I want to keep will be gone. Patience + care.

Forgive me for using hipstamatic again but I'm loving these smokey yellow shots at the moment.

This article about Cibi and Mr Kitly in Saturday's Age made me smile. So beautifully written by Dan Rule. I'm so happy two of my favourite places in Melbourne are getting some media attention.

wallpaper block in progress

Nearly there with this wallpaper design. The lino block is almost carved and I'm doing a repeat this time. I'm so nerdy that once I finished designing the repeat I put it into Photoshop and arranged the repeat panels in a long rectangle just like it would look on a piece of wallpaper. I wanted to see how the finished product would look before I print it for real. And then I played with different colours until I decided on a few to trial. Nerdy, no? Hoping to print tomorrow if I don't get swayed by serious Sunday lounging activities.

carving the floors

I am completely awestruck by the sheer size of some people's vision. This project is grand. It's called 'Carving the Floors' and is about a group of college printmaking students in Brunswick, Maine (USA) who set the ambitious aim of carving up the wooden floors of 2 classrooms in a soon to be demolished high school and then print off them. They wanted to do all this in 20 wee hours!!!! All I could think about is how difficult it would be to carve into floors with old varnish on them. You can read and see more here. Thanks to printinteresting for leading me there.

carving is like meditation

I'm cutting out a paper stencil for a screen print design. I started off using my little paper cutting knife for all those teeny tiny shapes.

And then quickly changed to my woodblock carving knife because it feels so much nicer to hold and I'm better at using it for no other reason than that I've spent hundreds and hundreds (could it be thousands?) of hours carving with it.

Slowly but surely...... I've got a cramp in my thumb now so have to take a break.

carving

It's pouring with rain this Sunday morning, and for those of you who don't live in Melbourne or don't know much about the Australian drought, this is a very good thing!

I have a lot of carving to do. This is the most tedious part of woodblock printmaking in my opinion but the nice part is you can end up with some gorgeously carved blocks which are like pieces of art in themselves. And not to mention it's the only way to get the print on the paper! I love using my carving tools. I bought them one by one in Japan as I had the money (good quality tools can be quite pricey) and now have a good collection. There's even a very old tool previously owned by the lovely Kazuko Hirota, a wonderful Japanese woodblock printer. The wooden handle is smooth with wear and very soft to touch and hold. It's a tiny tool with a small scoop carver and I swear it's one of the most used tools in my box.

They say in Japan that the rainy season or at least a rainy day is the best day for printing as it helps the paper to stay moist. If there's going to be any printing today I'd better stop my carving procrastination.