Today was sunny with a high around 80F - probably the warmest day of the year so far. I decided to do some carving outside and worked on the second color of the Tokyo reduction print. I'm planning four colors total. I did a little filming and hope to later edit a short video of the carving.

Some people geek out over smartphones, others, designer shoes...me, a new 8-inch, 28-durometer, Japanese printmaking brayer (i.e. the roller in the photo). Yes, I just wanted to use the word 'durometer' in a sentence...great Scrabble word, isn't it. I can't wait to see how this thing rolls out ink. Below is a sketch I'm working on for a new 8"x10" Tokyo-themed woodcut.

A new shipment of paper arrived yesterday, the house is now quiet...it's time to work.

The ink is still wet on this 3-color linocut I finished a couple days ago. I have yet to number the edition but hope it will come in at 14-15 prints. The sky was done by reduction and then a second block was carved for the silhouette. If you'd like more details on the step-by-step of this print, please feel free to check out the past few blog posts.

Linocut Print

And, this is how the El Capitan woodblock print I previously mentioned turned out.

El Capitan, Yosemite National Park - Woodcut Print

Tonight I was excited to print the third color of my streetscape print and I immediately ran into a problem. The third layer wasn't lining up with the two layers underneath. Yikes! It was 2-3mm too short, which doesn't sound like a lot, but is easily seen by the eye of the viewer. It threw me for a complete loop. Frustrated and perplexed, I started troubleshooting. What was I doing wrong? I even had a test print from last weekend that showed the third layer printing just fine.

Then it dawned on me. We've had very heavy rain all week, which increased the humidity drastically and stretched the paper. The stretching of the paper probably threw the registration of the layers out of wack. A quick Google search for an answer confirmed my hunch. So I put the brakes on tonight's print run after losing the first four prints. I'll wait until the rain abates and hope the paper shrinks back again to the approximate same size. Or am I missing something else?

Fingers crossed.

Earlier this week I finished a new woodcut of Yosemite National Park's El Capitan and this afternoon I printed the second color of a streetscape print (see the photo below). Today's printing went smoothly and thankfully I was able to mix a workable blue/green color. The next step is to carve a new block for the 3rd, 4th and 5th colors of the linocut print.

This is how the mountain relief print turned out - it's now drying for a couple weeks. It combines the use of both wood and lino blocks and I started it last summer but put it aside for a while. I decided to print the actual mountain using a gradation from dark to light. If you're curious about how the project started, you might check out the original post.