I printed the third colour, white on both versions, on the print I’m planning to use as a teaching tool for reductive woodcut classes. The background is really starting to look like snow now.
Here’s the progression of colours so far, from left to right: pale gray, then teal, then white on the white paper; white, teal, then white again on the blue paper.
The block has now been all carved out ready to print colour number four, which I hope will finish off the snow so I can switch to the warm brown and red tones in the castoff Tim Hortons cup.
Here are the buttons we sewed on in class today! We’ll run this class again in the fall, because it’s an important skill and we know you want to learn it. It covers the basics of sewing a flat button, a discussion of different methods to keep buttons from falling off, and how to make a longer thread shank for thicker fabric.
Freshly printed toy dinosaur postcards! Block print and letterpress on the front, with screenprinted postcard backs on the other side. Aww yeah!
We also have a new batch of our toy dinosaur notebooks, now in fun bright colours. We’ve also got loads of new dinosaur greeting cards (not shown, because they look exactly like the notebooks, only they’re cards). The rest of the dinosaur’s body extends onto the back of the book. And if you wanted to, you could colour them!
I can assure you that the hot pink ones are totally clearly printed, it’s just for some reason my phone camera can’t handle that colour and they look all out of focus. It must mean those ones are too terrifyingly awesome to look straight at. Rawr!
Here’s a student trimming up the cover paper on her nearly finished drum leaf book in tonight’s class:
And here are the finished books!
We’ve just confirmed that Levigator Press will be hosting master bookbinder Dan Mezza of London, ON, to teach the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild course, Bookbinding 1 in October 2015. This is a 6-day, intensive course that will get you on the road to serious bookbinding and book preservation, and it is a prerequisite for taking further CBBAG courses. We’re delighted to be able to offer this high quality course in Windsor.
More details to come, but for now you can contact us if you’re interested and we’ll put you on a mailing list so you’ll get updates as they happen. The course will run for three consecutive weekends, 9am to 4pm Saturday and Sunday, on the following dates: October 17 & 18, October 24 & 25, and October 31 & November 1. You’ll register for the course through CBBAG rather than through Levigator Press, and will be required to take out a CBBAG membership in order to take the course. We’ll fill you in on more of those details later but in the meantime, mark your calendars!
For more information about the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild, click here–> CBBAG website
This is our third time running the Reductive Woodcut class. Just one student this time, which means she gets private instruction for the (lower) price of a group class. Summer is a slow time for classes, so we really appreciate anyone willing to give up a couple of precious summer porch evenings in order to come in and learn something amazing with us.
Here’s our student’s inked block getting ready to print: it’s a portrait of Frida Kahlo in a style that reminds me of Byzantine icons. Gorgeous, and it gave the student and I a chance to share our love of Kahlo’s work and our excitement about having recently seen the Kahlo and Rivera in Detroit exhibition at the DIA.
No shots of the print this week, because it’s impossible to see or photograph any detail in an all-yellow print. Stay tuned for next week when we print the second colour (and possibly the third, if we work quickly)!
Our friend Leesa dropped in today for an impromptu lesson in the simple one-needle Coptic bookbinding stitch. Now she’s going to go forth and teach it to her own students. Spreading the love!
I’ve been plugging away at this amberlith cutting, which is going to be turned into a screenprinted poster that people can colour! It’s a slow process, but gratifying, and the end result is going to be worth it.
Ashleigh and Chelsea came in today to finish up their screenprints. They did an amazing job and we had loads of fun!
Printed tonight! We also have them in graphite and Day-Glo orange.
