Today’s printing: the second colour on our woodblock print of a Tim Hortons cup lying in a pile of dirty roadside snow. We’re holding back one print from each run so that the edition can be used to help explain the reductive process.
This block is being printed in two versions. One began with a run of gray ink on white paper, and the other with white ink on blue paper. The second run was printed in the same colour on both versions, a transparent teal. The image is already starting to come together.
There will probably be another run of white in the snow followed by a pale gray, then on to the brown and red tones of the cup.
Here’s another reductive print recently completed by a student in our studio, this time in linocut. It began with a light gray layer (not shown), then this teal:
The third run was printed in a bronze colour:
And then the key layer tied it all together in deep blue:
In our recent two-session letterpress cards class, students set their own designs in a mix of wood and metal type and experimented with printing them both on the small platen and the proof press. Check out some of their cards and lockups:
I printed up a few more new card designs today. This first one is an old lino block that I made many years ago; it was my Xmas card print in either 1999 or 2000, back before we even came to Windsor. It’s a simple white line drawing of Polly, the bald, armless mannequin who lives on our stairs landing, as an angel. I thought it would be fun to print it again, so here’s Ms Polly in straight-out-of-the-can Gamblin ultramarine blue, printed overtop of some woodgrain and lace prints.
I also cut and printed this little lino block of falling hearts in metallic gold, to use as a sample for this evening’s letterpress cards workshop. These dried quickly and are already available in our shop!
Spent the long weekend printing up a bunch of Surprise Party In The Snow letterpress cards! They’ll be available from our website soon, but for now you have to come in to the shop to get them.
Printing linoblock scallops on top of floral fabrics for dresses!
On Saturday, May 2, Levigator Press hosted a letterpress workshop with visiting artist Emily Davidson of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in partnership with the Arts Council Windsor Region, Artcite Inc, and Mayworks. Following Emily’s talk about her studio practice, participants set type, locked up a forme in the press, and printed a collaborative poster.
An exhibition of Emily Davidson’s work can be viewed until June 6 at Artcite.
Here are some of the fun fabric prints our Wednesday students made. They chose an image from our woodblock library to use as a background (a street map of the Walkerville neighbourhood, printed in green), then they dressed those up with a variety of small wood and lino blocks and rubber stamps. They really got creative and made some amazing prints!
Yes, there’s that Day-Glo orange again. We love that colour here at Levigator Press.
There was a lot of interest in this class so for those of you who missed it, we’ll be running it again on Monday, June 8. Stay tuned, or call the shop now to register!
This is a sample print to help in explaining the reductive woodcut process to students. I’m making two different editions, and will keep a print of each successive run aside to show the progression. Here’s the first run, in gray ink on white paper, and white ink on blue:
Our Wednesday night workshop participants had loads of fun carving their rubber stamps and printing them on some colourful French Paper cards and envelopes. We broke into that special can of orange Day-Glo ink again because you just cannot go wrong with that glorious colour. Check it out:
