Thursday, November 20, 2008

Woodcut Class


I've been working on a 5 color reduction woodcut using this photo by photographer Scott Liddell as a reference. Scott very kindly has given me permission to use this photo...we don't have too many sheep wandering around Center City Philadelphia or the near suburbs!

I cropped it up so that it's going to be a portrait of ONE sheep, the guy in the foreground, of course. I also am going with more of a yellow monochromatic print rather than the reddish one we see in the photo. Just love to use colors I love!

Last week, I printed 18 with a creamy color I mixed up with the help of my teacher, printmaker Jeff Dentz. On that one, I only cut away a little of the woodblock to be my white, so most of it was a very light cream.

Last night, Jeff taught me various methods of registration to make sure my next color will line up right on top of the cream color. This time, I used yellow ochre ink as a base, with some of last week's cream to lighten up the value and a little of a reddish brown to make a really pretty shade that's several values darker.

Next week, another layer!

This class has been really fun, as well as educational. My classmates are all friendly and helpful...and there's some REALLY nice prints happening! I really enjoy having Jeff as a teacher, as well. He's great at teaching various techniques, but also will posing options and encouraging creativity.

Incidentally, if you are an artist and you see a photo you'd like to use, I would encourage you to contact the photographer...they are often great about giving permission to use their photo. Of course, we would never use it without permission because that would violate their copyright!

My pet portrait website is http://robinzebley.com. If you'd like to read my whole blog, just click on the banner at the top of this post! I'm glad you're here, and would love comments and questions, either publicly or privately. I love to hear from other artists and other art lovers! And animal lovers!

4 comments:

Cat-in-a-Box said...

Robin, I can't wait to see the sheep woodcut print when you're done!!

Robin said...

Ha, ha, me either! What's really fun about this is it's a work of faith...I HOPE it will turn out the way I envision, but until I do the final plate...who knows?

Anonymous said...

I'm also looking forward to seeing it! Each week is like Christmas!

Robin said...

Andrea, you'll see it when I do!