Levigator Press

I made some samples today to show what can be done in the Trace Monotype class (April 6; details here: TRACE MONOTYPE).

This little bird, measuring 4 by 5 inches, took me about 45 minutes to draw. It’s on Japanese Kitakata paper that had previously been printed with a pale blue woodcut. The ink was stiffened with magnesium carbonate but you can see that it was still a little sticky, and so the bird is enveloped in a cloud of atmospheric smudginess.

I spent more time on these three children, from a scanned negative from my granddad’s collection, circa 1957. More mag carb was added to the ink to better control the cloudy quality. You can see that with the slightly stiffer ink it was possible to get a wider range of tone, for instance in the girl’s school jacket and the little boy’s shorts, where soft pressure conveys a dark tone to the fabric while harder pressure brings out the darker shadows in the folds.

In the original photo the children stood in front of a wild garden, which I edited down in order to frame them with just a hint of foliage. This print took about three hours to complete. It’s on Japanese Tokuatsu paper, which is the paper we’ll be using in the workshop.