Laura Boswell ARE – Printmaker

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Tag: japanese woodblock

Not to worry…

You might have noticed there was no Friday blog last week. Writing came a poor second to printmaking that week and a good deal of the week before, as did laundry, regular meals, exercise and remembering not to hold my breath for long periods. I’m sure you’ll recognise the symptoms of starting a new project and the excitement of running with your ideas to the exclusion of everything else.

For most of my life the failure to provide a Friday blog as promised would be so anxiety inducing that I’d have made myself write one whatever the inconvenience. Letting people down, however distant and virtual those people might be and however tenuous the promise, is a fear I have in common with many others and it’s one that’s easing gradually. I’m sure I’m not the only person to back themselves into a corner by making a commitment while failing to realise that it’s mainly, or even only, me that actually cares about it. I’m guessing you’re OK with this blog missing the odd week or two*. It’s not a huge deal, I’m not writing anything more important than something to muse over while eating a biscuit. I’m getting over it and, if you’re prone to worrying about this kind of thing like me, have another biscuit and drop a few minor commitments too.

The all-consuming project is far more exciting. I am making a set of Japanese woodblock prints of the North Yorkshire Moors.

One of my new Yorkshire prints – rough grasses in a December afternoon dusk.

These prints have demanded a fresh approach and I’ve been rising to the challenge. Ironically these new Japanese woodblock prints owe much to the kind of mark making that’s more a part of traditional linocut, while my recent lino work is fast becoming indistinguishable from the washy transparency of traditional Japanese woodblocks. Contrary, but it’s what’s working for me and now it’s working, I can’t leave the printmaking alone. So this week’s blog was a bit touch and go too if I’m honest.

This week on the Ask an Artist podcast we interview master paint maker Michael Harding who, even as a student, never had any issues about prioritising his love of mixing pigments to the exclusion of everything else, including the welfare of his bedsit and the loss of his housing deposit.

*I did get one complaint from my brother-in-law who wanted last week’s blog to feature my award for the tartan todger. Sorry about that, but the whole story of my early artistic genius concerning the male member is included in last week’s Ask an Artist episode on competitions.

Behind the scenes

Registration problems, sometimes it all goes wrong…

Like most people, I do try to present a fairly polished front to the world when it comes to my work. Certainly I do my best to be organised and efficient at the admin end of the business (investing in a desk and a filing cabinet has been a revelation and I am pathetically thrilled by having a basket on my desk with stapler and sellotape to hand. Scissors still elude me despite bulk buying, but we can’t ask for everything…)

The upshot of all this is that I tend to only show the good bits of my work: the neat little sketches with potential, the studio shots where I look in control and am not squinting at the camera in a confused leer and, most of all, finished prints. For a change I thought I would show you some heart ache. Things don’t always go well and this print has been a really good example of what can go wrong. Inevitably this was the last print in the series of fourteen due for my client with a deadline looming and almost as inevitably I developed a head cold featuring a dangerously drippy nose at the same time.

working proof showing how things shouldn't look
working proof showing how things shouldn’t look

Japanese woodblock relies on a series of registration slots called Kento. These slots are cut by chisel onto the wood along with the block for printing and are crucial to lining up all the layers of the print into a full coloured picture. They act as a guide and the printing paper fits into them and is held in place to take the impression. Get any of the Kento slots a couple of mm out and the picture will be wonky. The print here has 18 different Kento slots (some of the blocks share a Kento, there are roughly 45 to 50 different woodblocks for this picture) and somewhere along the line I was out of sync.

Trouble is that it isn’t until I start printing that the problem becomes clear and even then it is seldom obvious just which kento is the problem and with several blocks sharing a kento, it could be just one of them that is out of line. The paper doesn’t make things easy either: it must stay damp, consistently the same damp, or it changes dimension. The bigger the print, the bigger the distortion. This print is 120cm wide and the paper can change by as much as 4mm as it dries. It’s easy to control if all goes to plan, but have a head scratching crisis of alignment and the paper is against me, drying out as I try to see the break in the chain of Kentos and adding to the confusion.

In the end I did manage to get a finished print without the benefit any drips from my leaking nose, but it was a nightmare.

DSC_0234I would love you all to think that I have everything under control and things always go to plan, but it’s not the case. I do get caught out, as I have here, and I am far from perfect. It’s just that I tend not to talk about it much!