Wednesday, February 4, 2009

DeCordova Museum School Woodcut Class

This winter I am teaching a 5-week intensive course at the DeCordova Museum School on waterbased woodcut printing, printing by hand using some Jenny-modified traditional Japanese printing techniques.

I first learned this from Keiji Shinohara while at a workshop at Frogman's several years ago. In turn, Keiji had learned it while apprenticing with a living treasure of Japan. Along the way, he had incorporated some more contemporary details into his technique, including using mylar tracings to seperate the colors and Golden Harvest Teknabond Wallpaper paste instead of rice paste to add tack to the inks.

For myself, I sometimes use only one kento mark, eliminating the corner mark. It's kind of a hybrid between kento and t-bar. I also use my key blocks for monoprinting (the Goddess Night and Travellar series are from a key block for a print never editioned...).

Below are images from this morning's class, week 4. Blocks are carved and they are now proofing colors, checking registration (all on spot!) and already thinking towards their next images. But there is just a week left! Nevertheless, they are all well on thier way to becoming great woodcut printers and can certainly handle it on thier own after the class has ended next week.





No comments: