Devils Tower - View Two

Wow, August kind of took the bit in its teeth and ran away with me. Busy with printmaking and some writing, but I neglected to update on the status of the 36 Views of Devils Tower series.

Devil's Tower View Two is up at the ConstanceBrewer blog. This time I did a preliminary sketch on canvas as well as some drawings.

Devils Tower View Two oil sketch 5 x 7 in.

View Two was a reduction print. From Wikipedia:

In relief printing, a reduction print is a multicolor print in which the separate colors printed from the same block at different stages. Usually, the lightest color of the design is printed first, then the block is "reduced" by carving to the areas which the artist wants to print the second color from, and so forth. The disadvantage of reduction printing as opposed to printing from multiple blocks is that once the first color is printed, the matrix for it is destroyed in the creation of the printing matrix for the second color. It is impossible to undo mistakes.

It's that "Impossible to undo mistakes" thing that can really throw a wrench in your day. Am I totally happy with the print? No, not really, but it was a good learning experience. I'll do another one - just not the next print. I have the idea to try, try again at moku hanga, and have been assembling the materials to give that a go.

I also ended up with two variants on the print. One a black and white outline, the other is a colored pencil variant. I have a side series being planned of things around Devils Tower - flora, fauna, signs, other interesting rockpiles. I'll post those as they appear in my repertoire.

Now, onward to View Three!

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