Descending Ashtray

Tonight I finished up the woodblock print idea I had a few weeks ago. I tried it first on a piece of 5-ply birch plywood, but the veneer was really thin and I gave up on the block midway through. I started again with a linoleum block I found rooting through some old art supplies.

I began the block carving by laying out for the holes with a square and Sharpie. Next, I used a spade bit chucked in the drill press to drill the center hole and the ring surrounding it, leaving a doughnut-shaped area to print. Here’s a test print I did after just drilling, but before doing any carving. Some uneven ink coverage, but this was just for illustration purposes.

Here is a shot of the block in progress. You can see that I did outlines with a v-gouge, and then used a regular u-gouge to clear the rest of the non-printing areas.

Once I finished cleaning out the non-printing areas, I did my first test print. For this print, I inked the block, set a piece of paper on top of it, and cranked the press down.

A pretty good first print. Since it’s a new press, I thought I’d experiment by using a piece of printng felt on top of the paper but beneath the press plate. I also cleaned up a few areas that I missed before. The felt distributes the pressure better, so more areas revealed themselves than I intended, but the ink coverage was better.

I cleaned up the areas I didn’t want to print, and tried again with the felt. This is as close as I got to a satisfactory print (pretty darn close).

After getting good results, I thought I’d try a technique I used at the University of Iowa, that is, soaking the paper before printing. It should be noted that I am using water-based block printing ink made by Speedball. At Iowa, I used oil-based ink. Paper is Rives BFK. Anyway, it was an experiment that was destined to fail. Wet paper and water soluble ink don’t mix. Well, actually they do. It’s kind of an interesting look, but not one I was after.

What a mess the block was after all that water was squeezed onto it. I decided to try another print to soak it up, but without adding any ink to the mix. A second-generation print like this is usually called a “ghost print.”

My ink was starting to dry out at this point, but the block was wet, so I went for one more print.

I only pulled 6 prints before the ink started to dry out. The benefit to oil-based ink is that it dries slower, allowing more time printing, but it’s a bear to clean up and requires lots of rags and paint thinner. So I’ll either keep to small runs or switch to oil. I think I’ll stick with the water-based for now.