Russian Doll

The print I was proofing in 'Testing, testing' is now finished. It's a very small edition which I will be offering for the first time when Stoneflower Studio opens for York Open Studios in April 2018.

'Russian Doll'
Japanese watercolour woodblock
Image size approx 9.5 x 18 cm

I enjoyed this exercise and I'm pleased with the shading; I think it successfully gives a rounded effect to the doll. The handpainted details have also been carefully varied in strength to add to the illusion of depth. The nature of both the moku hanga printmaking technique with its shading (bokashi) and the handpainted elements mean that each print is unique, making this a 'varied edition'.

Testing, testing

I've started my first new work for a long time. If you follow me on social media you might know I had an accident at the end of last summer that wiped me out for quite a while. As well as the practical issues of being unable to walk for several months, the overwhelming tiredness of a body throwing all its resources into healing meant that I completely lost my printmaking mojo.

But now I'm back, and as I have found I am rather rusty this seems like a perfect time to talk about proofing and testing new prints and correcting mistakes. A lot of art blogs present the perfect finished article - so for a change I'm going to show you what goes wrong.

To make life hard for myself, my first new print is a Japanese watercolour woodblock (moku hanga), which demands quite a high level of technical proficiency. Maybe I should have eased myself back in with a single colour linocut.....

Anyway, I had in my mind's eye an image of a wooden Russian doll. I wanted to use the moku hanga shading to create the rounded shape and shiny varnished surface of the doll, as if I were painting it in watercolour, but also wanted to include the folk art hand painted decoration. My plan is to add the line detail to the finished and dried prints with a brush so that each print is unique, just as each hand painted doll is unique.

I have two sets of Russian dolls. I have had them so long I can't even remember where I got them, though it is likely the older and larger one was a gift from my merchant seaman brother who used to bring me back a doll from every country he visited when I was a small child. That makes it nearly 50 years old which explains why the outer doll is so faded.







My design is a sort of composite of all these dolls, and was transferred onto six different blocks for carving and printing. I printed up four test prints, each of which had different things wrong with it, which can be frustrating but is also the point of proofing.

From a distance these look like a good start, but when you get close...... oh so many mistakes....

Lets's start with the registration, which means lining up the paper on each successive block correctly so that the different elements match. These two sections are meant to lie next to each other, not have a gap between them. Oops.
The tricky bit here is working out what went wrong. Japanese woodblocks are lined up using kento slots cut in the wood. It should be foolproof, but pushing the paper half a millimetre more firmly into one slot than the other can create distortions of several millimetres at the other end of the block. Once I'd worked out what was going on with this block I wrote a note on it to remind myself to drop the paper into place a certain way in future.


There's no excuse for the registration mess here though, with two layers being printed out of alignment. It's one block being used for successive layers so this is purely user error and sloppiness on my part. Must do better.

This granulating effect is caused by insufficient nori (rice flour) paste being blended with the watercolour. It can be used deliberately to get an interesting texture but is not what I want here where I'm trying to depict smooth varnished wood. Must be more careful next time.

The mix on this print is more successful and the shading is working quite well to create a 3D effect (notice the highlight towards the left). I want this effect to be stronger though, so on the finished prints I will start with an even lighter layer and build up the shading to even darker red. This test print used about three or four bokashi (shading) layers; I probably need to do six or seven.

These marks around the image are where the watercolour has strayed onto the surrounding block and been picked up on the print. There are various ways to tackle it:
1. Carve away more wood, especially if particular spots keep causing problems.
2. Clean up more thoroughly around the inked area before printing.
3. JUST BE MORE BLOOMING CAREFUL.

A quick test run of the hand painted details went well, so now it's time  to prepare the paper and mix up a new batch of nori paste, ready for printing tomorrow. Watch this space.

UPDATE: the finished print can be seen in this blog post.

Four Seasons: a collagraph series (Part Two - how they were made)

In an earlier post I wrote about how this series of collagraphs came about and I promised to write in more depth about how they were actually made, so here it is.

As with most of my prints, this one started off sketched out on the back of an A4 piece of paper from the scrap paper drawer. (This disorganised scruffiness is why people who ask to see my sketch books are often disappointed.) Actually I suppose it really started in my head, appearing there unbidden as these things often do, and the trick was to keep it there until I had a chance to draw it. I can't be sure but I have a lingering fear that a lot of my best ideas have vanished like mist burning off in the sun. I will never know.

Once drawn out I then transferred the image onto a piece of mountboard which I would use as my plate. I flipped the image so that the print would come out the same I way I had originally created it. You might think that for a scene like this that doesn't really matter, but it does to me....

From sketch to plate

Now it was time for the fun part, sticking and cutting and messing about with collage. Well maybe not so much of the messing about. It is fun, but there is rather more to it than making a simple collage. As well as the shapes and texture I also have to consider the way different surfaces will take up the ink. I have to think ahead to the practicalities of inking up the plate and also remember that those parts most prominent on the plate will recede on the print. As with all printmaking, everything has to be done in reverse, like living in Alice's Looking Glass world.

Once complete the plate needs to be varnished on both sides

Inking up was a slow job, carefully applying the ink to different areas and then wiping away to get the right amount of coverage for each section. Some parts needed to be left with a good coverage, some needed to be cleaned and polished almost to whiteness. Each season in this series of four prints required not only different colours but also its own inking and wiping order. I made swatches at the end of each initial printing session so I could replicate the colours for subsequent ones and I also made notes in my print 'recipe book'.

Applying ink and then wiping and burnishing it

And then it was time to print. A registration sheet laid on the printing press is always useful to centre the plate on your paper, but for this print it was absolutely vital. The plate is in two parts and these had to be placed in exactly the same relation to each other on every print.

The registration sheet (left) and 'Winter' ready to print (right)

Damp prints are taped to boards so that they dry flat - seen here 'Autumn' and 'Summer'

Collagraph plates are fragile and I knew I was asking a lot of this one to survive printing editions of four different prints. Sure enough, some over enthusiastic cleaning at the end of one printing session ended up with the tree trunk tearing. Aaagh! You might think I could simply tape a cocktail stick on the back to hold it together, but this would make enough of a ridge to make the plate unusable. Any repair has to be as flat as possible. I glued the torn edges together and then carefully applied a single piece of paper to the back before varnishing the area again. The join will show on prints but as the tree trunk was textured anyway I think I got away with it.

Emergency repairs

And finally the four seasons were complete. A framed set will be exhibited at the Yorkshire Museum of Farming from 15th - 30th October 2016 and unframed prints are now available in my shop.

Four Seasons: a collagraph series (Part One - the idea)

Since Easter I have been one of a small group drawn from York Printmakers who have jointly been acting as Artist in Residence at the Yorkshire Museum of Farming. This wonderful place, just a mile or so from my studio, is home to (as you would expect) an extensive collection of farming machinery and equipment through the ages, but also livestock (from bees and ducks to sheep and pigs), the magical Danelaw Viking Village (regularly inhabited by re-enactors or thronging with groups of school children), a small Roman Fort, a Tudor house, a couple of prehistoric round houses and, to round it all off, the Derwent Light Railway.

The Danelaw Viking Village

It is also, conveniently, in the same village as the splendid Hawthorn Printmakers who made my press and who very generously loaned us a smaller version to use during our time at the Museum.

Our base has been a small pod in the middle of the huge barn which houses the Four Seasons Gallery over two floors. With glass walls on either side we have become one of the exhibits as we work at our printmaking. Visitors sometimes venture in to speak to us and ask questions; more peer in curiously from the outside at the strange captive artists. (None have yet banged on the glass but it wouldn't have surprised me if someone did).

The pod has been equipped to recreate the
 natural habitat of the shy and elusive printmaker...

The exhibits in the gallery take the visitor through the farming year, with audio commentary that is triggered by movement sensors as people walk around from season to season. Working in the pod we hear this commentary over and over again. You might think this would drive us mad.... and I must confess I have heard all I want to hear about the development of the plough... but after a while it became reassuringly consistent and the repetition echoed the theme of the gallery: the unchanging and reliable cycle of the farming year, a pattern which has remained largely unaltered down the centuries.

I initially planned a collagraph print of a countryside scene in the colours of autumn and harvest. As I began making the plate, however, I wondered if I could use the same plate to produce an image for each season. The fixed shape and texture of the plate would represent the enduring landscape, while changes to colours would reflect the passage of time through the year.

Creating the collagraph plate

This was an ambitious idea; collagraph plates are fragile and this was asking a lot of one assemblage of card and glue (and indeed I did have a torn tree trunk disaster which needed surgery with pva glue, backing paper and varnish) but I think I pulled it off. (That's a printmaking pun there. I promise if you're a printmaker it's hilarious.)

details of 'Autumn' and 'Spring'

The finished prints will debut at our end-of-residency exhibition at the Museum starting on 15th October 2016. More information here.

Update: there is now a further blog post explaining and demonstrating in greater depth how these collagraph prints were created. You can find it here.

The making of Velvet Ears

Social media can open interesting doors and make unexpected connections. I created this print last year, based on a photo taken by one of my online pals (whom I have never met in real life) of a puppy belonging to friends of hers. A few tweets gave me the permission of both the photographer and the puppy's owners to turn the image into a collagraph monoprint, and as a thank you the first two prints from the edition went to the parties concerned.

Although each print in the edition of 15 is made from the same plate, the image is created by wiping and removing ink in a painterly way. The results will therefore be slightly (or even greatly) different each time, making each print a monoprint. This is easier to show than to explain so I have finally got around to making a video of the process.

After giving away the first two prints in the edition, I put another one in the Taster Exhibition for last year's York Open Studios, where I am pleased to say it was the first sale made. Others from the edition are now available in my shop.

Just a print

Last Christmas I sent tiny etchings to some of my friends and family; each one was a numbered and signed print from a limited edition of 50. Most thanked me for their print but a couple thanked me for their 'card'. I smiled and nodded and fought back the temptation to ask anxiously if they had dropped it in the Christmas card recycling point at the supermarket, or cut it up to make a tag for next year's wrapping. How could I correct them without sounding like a bossy teacher or an over-sensitive artist? Finally one lovely friend phoned and gave effusive thanks and said she would treasure her little robin as a "Jane Duke original", but then corrected herself and said "... of course I know it's not really an original, but it is to me".
"No, no" I replied, "it is an original."
"Really?" she said, surprised and delighted, "Oh I thought it was just a print!"

'Robin'
Drypoint etching 6 x 6 cm

It's easy to see why there is confusion; despite having one of the richest vocabularies in the world, the English language still uses the same word to mean an original piece of art hand created by the artist and a scanned reproduction of an image run off on a machine. The problem has been exacerbated since the 1990s by artists selling giclée (inkjet) reproductions of their paintings as 'limited edition prints'. You can hardly blame the non-artist public for not immediately making the distinction. So what are printmakers to do to protect our craft? We can sulk and stamp and weep or we can quietly, determinedly and politely make it possible for people to see and understand what we do.

I enjoy giving short demonstrations at art events and in my studio during the York Open Studios weekends, and I also have leaflets on my stand at art shows, explaining the processes. I post step by step demos and photos of work in progress here on the blog and I have put a printmaking guide and a glossary of terms on my website. And then of course I also teach workshops for those who are curious enough to want to try for themselves.

I've now taken another step, and after wrestling with self consciousness and fear of making a hash of it, I stuck my phone in a clamp, switched on the camera and made my first YouTube video. Appropriately perhaps, it shows the making of that little Robin etching which was given out at Christmas and which brought some misunderstandings to light. I'd love you to watch it if you have 5 minutes.

Now I've made this leap I will be making more of these videos. I hope they help to spread the word about what printmaking is, on behalf of all printmakers whose work is so much more than 'just a print'.

At the time of writing the remaining 'Robin' prints in the edition can be purchased in my shop

Robin Nest - printing a collagraph

One of the most common questions I get asked at shows is "How long does one of these take you?". The poor unsuspecting enquirer is probably expecting a simple two word answer starting with a number and ending with a unit of time, but I'm afraid instead they get an explanation of the many variables of printmaking. I try to stop talking before their eyes glaze over too much.

With some forms of printmaking, the time-consuming bit is carving and creating the plates from which the print is made, while the actual printing is a relatively quick whizz with an ink roller and a pass through a press. With others the plate might be fairly simple, but inking up for each individual print is a slow and painstaking job. The collagraph print I'm going to show you here is one of the latter. The plate was made from a piece of mountboard (or matboard if you're in the US); some parts were incised to remove the top layer while in other areas texture was created by sticking on elements including thread, paper shapes and lines of pva glue. Once finished the plate was sealed with several coats of shellac.


The first colour to be applied was a pale green blue for the twigs in the nest. This had to be pushed right down into the incised areas so I used a toothbrush to work it in. The ink was the thick and sticky consistency you would use for other intaglio methods (eg etching) so it would stay where it was put and not be easily wiped out again.


I didn't want much of this colour on the surface of the plate so I wiped the excess off with a piece of scrim and to make some of the marks even clearer I cleaned up around the edges with a cotton bud.

Then I added a green ink with a roller. Now I was working in a relief method so the ink just lay on the raised surfaces not in the indentations. The ink was loosened to a relief printing consistency for this using an extender. After inking, the outer area was softened and blurred by wiping with scrim, while the centre part was cleaned up with a rag to remove as much ink as possible

The middle of the plate was now inked up with a brown colour. This was another time that I needed the ink to be pushed right down into the nooks and crannies, so I used a poupée; meaning 'doll' in French, this is a thick soft stump made by screwing a piece of rag into a ball and then wrapping and taping or tying another piece round it.

Then I used another piece of clean rag to take the brown ink off the paper eggs in the centre and yet another to wipe some pale blue ink directly onto them. (Worn out shirts never get wasted here.)

Finally, after around half an hour of adding and wiping ink the plate was ready....

... to be passed through the etching press with a piece of dampened printmaking paper, and a print was pulled.

And then it was time to clean up the plate and do it all over again. After seven prints the fragile plate began to degrade and that was the end of the edition. Each print inevitably came out differently so the prints are numbered with the annotation 'VE' for 'variable edition'.

'Robin Nest' is available to purchase on my website