It is finally ready to present, the Sanctuary Relief Print, after several months of work give or take, dedicated to this project. After traveling through Utah in the spring of 2019 I returned home with a treasure trove of images that had me excited to play with the ideas swirling around in my imagination.
Ultimately I to chose the image for this work based on the profound feeling I experienced while there, and decided on the approach to take. First I created an oil painting to serve as the design for the relief print, typically I do a drawing and break down the color sequence for the print but I wanted a painterly feel to this print, a painting seemed to be the best way to accomplish that.
Originally I thought this would be a fairly straight forward project that could be created by extensive use of rainbow rolls to achieve the lovely hombre effect from brilliant warm light to cool shade that attracted me to the original image, it didn't take long to realize this was going to require a lot of layers to reach the goals I'd set. I also ended up deciding to carve more blocks for specific areas to deepen some shadows and colors, I feel this decision was successful and worth the extra effort.
Here I began with 20 in the edition and as nearly always happens 4 got converted into proofs, the proofs are not for sale. Ultimately there are 17 layers of Cranfield Caligo Safe Wash ink on Rives BFK paper, and 3 blocks were carved. At 22" x 16" this is also the largest print I have done as yet. As a result I learned a lot about what happens when you go big, after using up a lot more ink, running out of extender, and paper sagging onto the block before being ready.
Because of these things I decided to write up a blog that will explain each layer, trials and tribulations one by one. This will serve as a journal for me, and perhaps something useful for any printmakers who are interested and maybe help people see what goes into a print like this compared to pushing a button on an inkjet printer. The blog will come soon and will be added to over time, please feel free to interact with questions and observations.
It is finally ready to present, the Sanctuary Relief Print, after several months of work give or take, dedicated to this project. After traveling through Utah in the spring of 2019 I returned home with a treasure trove of images that had me excited to play with the ideas swirling around in my imagination.
Ultimately I to chose the image for this work based on the profound feeling I experienced while there, and decided on the approach to take. First I created an oil painting to serve as the design for the relief print, typically I do a drawing and break down the color sequence for the print but I wanted a painterly feel to this print, a painting seemed to be the best way to accomplish that.
Originally I thought this would be a fairly straight forward project that could be created by extensive use of rainbow rolls to achieve the lovely hombre effect from brilliant warm light to cool shade that attracted me to the original image, it didn't take long to realize this was going to require a lot of layers to reach the goals I'd set. I also ended up deciding to carve more blocks for specific areas to deepen some shadows and colors, I feel this decision was successful and worth the extra effort.
Here I began with 20 in the edition and as nearly always happens 4 got converted into proofs, the proofs are not for sale. Ultimately there are 17 layers of Cranfield Caligo Safe Wash ink on Rives BFK paper, and 3 blocks were carved. At 22" x 16" this is also the largest print I have done as yet. As a result I learned a lot about what happens when you go big, after using up a lot more ink, running out of extender, and paper sagging onto the block before being ready.
Because of these things I decided to write up a blog that will explain each layer, trials and tribulations one by one. This will serve as a journal for me, and perhaps something useful for any printmakers who are interested and maybe help people see what goes into a print like this compared to pushing a button on an inkjet printer. The blog will come soon and will be added to over time, please feel free to interact with questions and observations.