Feather

 Today I took my first go at printing my largest ever Lino carving.  The Feather is 1150mm in length by 600mm which was a bit of beast to handle in printing. My printing bed is 600mm x 1200mm, so was basically as big as I can print. Then using a paper sheet cut from a roll of Fabriano Accademia which is 1.5m long, the physical sizes was a bit of a challenge, so I did a dry run first to get the order and process on how to handle the paper. Using the Cranfield inks are just so nice, mixed with extender and wax dryer they don’t dry to fast and with the size of the print and multi colors and mixes I was using, I didn’t need to rush. So overall I’m pretty pleased with the outcome of colors, even with the learning curve of printing such a large print, there is always more things to learn. I’ll need to cut away a few more sections that were picking up a bit too much background chatter and work of my blending of colors.

Ink bench preped and ready to go.

Feather (600mm x 1200mm)

Waterfall Landscape

Went back and cleaned up my Waterfall Landscape carving and printed off a few more using the Cranfield inks which I am really loving now that I’ve got it matched to some good paper. Mixed up some of my own colours with some wax drier and extender and getting some really nice prints now.

Shina board carving print.

 Forgot to post about my last Shina board print which I finished the first print run just before starting on the feather project. First Print came out ok, I was expecting the chatter in the background and wasn’t shaw how it would turn out…. Don’t quite like it that much, so going to go back and carve it out more and reduce it, not remove it all.

Still on the fence if I like Shina board more than lino

Feather

 Been busy planning and starting on my largest linocut print to date, its 1200mm x 500mm. Took a few weeks of trying out different papers that came in large rolls before taking the plunge and buying a roll. Ended up going with Fabriano Accademia Drawing paper that comes in a 1.5m x 10m roll, for just over $100, so that should keep me going for a while.  All the time testing small sheets of paper I’ve been slowly working on the feather carving.

Picked up a really large permanent marker which makes checking my carving much easier. Been steady progress so far, so should have finished the carving in another week or so.

3D printed Chisel shelf.

Finished up 3D printing my chisel shelfs today. These are for all my Flex-cut chisels for carving that I use for my woodcut and lino prints. A pretty simple design overall, that I managed break one when I tried to drill a couple of the holes slightly larger to accommodate my latest acquisitions. Nothing a bit of super glue couldn’t fix. 

Makes it way tidier and easy to find the right tool when needed, plus stops me knocking them onto the floor and impaling my feet ... which I've managed to do twice now.