Bright Day, jigsaw relief print
Next week, there will be a new white-line woodcut to show you, but the block you saw last week still needs a bit more carving.
In 2013, I wrote a post about the making of this print. It amused me to read it again recently, so I thought I would share it with you.
"This print is a jigsaw AND a white-line. I completed it a few weeks ago from drawings in my sketchbook.
I don't know how many
pieces I ended up with after I cut up the block - you can try to count
them if you want to. But there isn't a prize for the right answer or
anything. This time.
Something exciting happened while I was making this print. Aside from getting this cool image, I had a little revelation.
My mother is a crazily
avid knitter (I swear this is relevant), but she doesn't like to do
small projects with lots of little ends to tie in at the finish. I got
her the book Knit Your Own Royal Wedding
a few years ago as a Mother's Day gift and she certainly laughed as she
looked through it, but I knew she wouldn't actually knit any of the
projects. "These characters are full of little fussy bits," she told
me.
I used to think I was the same way - not interested in "little fussy bits". But now I am not so sure.
This block seems like a
messy, logistical nightmare to print - there are a lot of pieces and
some of them are small enough to worry that they might end up lost down
the drain during clean up - but I really loved every minute I was making
it. Even snuggling the tiny pieces together when they were covered with
ink and one tiny slip of a finger meant pulling it apart and re-inking.
This was created in one layer, just like a traditional white-line woodcut. So I didn't have to worry about registering the paper on the block properly over and over again.
Basically, all is going well."