Mountain Lake

 2025 and the start of a new year. Been relaxing and not doing alot, other than the usual family catch ups. I have just finished the first carve of a new lino print, another large print at 500mm x800mm. I’ve cut out the sun and a large part of the lake so they will stay nice an white (or paper colour). I may even try airbrushing in some colour post printing. I used a super-sized sharpie pen to blacken the print as I carved. 

I’ll do a test print in the next few days, but expect I’ll need to tidy up a few parts and make the call on whether I add in some more detail or not.

Summer holiday projects

 Well I managed to pickup another 1900's mangle, this time a smaller version to do a restore on over the summer and convert it into a printing press. With over 50 meters of 1.8 meter fencing to paint and 100 meters or so of post and rail, i'll need something to break up the job and hide from the mid day sun. 

The pile of shame also needs some attention, but that can always wait, its summer after all. But I really do need to get some paint on the Shatter Point terrain and the many boxes of legion I have stacked in the corner. 

Cad Bane

 

Tonight’s effort was to finish off my Cad Bane carving and do a first print. Needs a bit of tidying up but pleased with the results. Defiantly need to try out some blue tomorrow after I complete the clean-up.

Captain Rex

 

Did up a small carving today of Star Wars Clone Captain Rex’s Helmet. Came out well, although I haven’t got the hang of printing on fabric yet. This is on a cheap T-shirt using Speed Ball Fabric ink, which I’ve only used a couple of times. It’s very different from my normal printing inks, so I’ll most likely be killing a few more t-shirts in the near future. Need to get some Blue ink to do a two tone version.

Star Wars Captain Rex T-Shirt Print

Now working on Cad Bane print converted from a nice drawing I found online.

 

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.

Shina board carving

 Trying out the second Shina board I got a months back, this time carving an image that I transferred onto it with the Mod Podge. Being a large area and not as detailed compared to my last one using the Mod Podge method, it really worked well. Found carving it much easier this time around after sharping my tools, which always helps.

I got inspired from a picture on my physio's wall of the muscles of the body, then found some illustrations online in different poses to use as reference. Haven’t made any prints of it yet, but pretty please how it’s come out so far.

Valkyrie

 Another small lino cut, 100mm x 100mm based off an image I created in AI and then transfered to the lino using the Mod podge method.

Valkyrie 

Mod Podge Queen

So my second attempt at using Mod Podge Matte-Mat-Mate as an image transfer to the Lino worked out quite well. The image transferred really well and leaving it for 24 hrs to fully dry before using water and rubbing away the paper seemed to work the best. Just have to take it slowly and not get it to wet gave the best results.

The one issue I did have is with a small detailed 100mm x100mm square was the thin coating of Mod Podge with the image in it, started lifting as I carved, making it rather difficult to see the patterns and lines so I ended up guessing where I was going in some cases. Once I carved out the main image I just removed the pealing mod podge and free handed the rest. The end result came out rather well. 

I also did a bunch of paper tests of different cheap papers I have at the moment and a couple of specific way more expensive printing papers on my Mangle press. I then tested some of my home made paper and quickly found I have to prime my paper first as the surface becomes to sticky and parts tend to lift as you remove the paper from the printing block. All a fun learning curve

Mangle prints

Put a few prints though the mangle press this evening and getting good consistent results on the pressure so very happy with the restore job I did on it. Still got a lot to learn about matching up paper with different inks. This portrait is on my own handmade paper from recycled paper and cardboard.

 

Also been doing more AI generated art and tried out a transfer method to a bit of lino using Mod Podge Matte which I'd seen done in a YouTube video. Took a couple of goes to get the method right. The real test will be how the Mod Podge changes the carving of the Lino.

Plant Dragon

 

My latest lino-cut of a dragon based off a plant image. Used a new ink I picked up today from Cranfield, which I had seen at the Printopia exhibition. First print using it I was impressed, I was expecting good results since the ink isn’t cheap. 

Shina board carving

  Finally got to try out carving on a shine board for the first time. Quite a bit different from Lino and yet still different from my other wood cut prints that I've done on various particle board wood panels.  It’s nothing flash, it was more of a trial with different tools and cuts to get a feel for what would and wouldn’t work. Defiantly need good sharp tools. Carving was much easier that the particle boards I’ve tried. Can’t wait to see how they go thought the mangle press once I finish restoring and convert it.

Cara

Primed and ready to paint

 Got the mangle parts mostly done, all bar the legs paint striped and cleaned and now undercoated with CRC rust converter ready for a test assemble before I apply a epoxy paint coat. Still got some sanding of the rollers to complete, but they are getting close to finishing.

Very happy with the outcome so far, really looking forward to getting the legs finished and it put back together. 

Age of AI art

 Started playing around with AI generation using some of my very old photographs from art school days, the idea was to simplify them down so I can use them a base for some woodcut prints. interesting results, found that AI really struggles with hands, guess that will come in time. I really like the Saxaphone and the way it came out, will be a good challenge to carve that out.

Heather

Cara and the Saxaphone 

Lino Print Workshop

 My wife got some tickets to a local Printopia festival for a couple of workshops. So this morning I spent it at the first one, which was a Intro to Linocuts. Having been doing Linocuts for some time now, actually seeing others doing it and different techniques was great. I picked up several very helpful little things and I got to use some actual nice large presses to print my image to a t-shirt. (much easier than doing it by hand pressing). The t-shirt didn’t turn out great, but after a few little tweaks post printing the t-shirt the couple of prints onto paper came out nice.

 

I then mucked around in the afternoon and did a second print

Year of the Dragon

I did this print for the Chinese Year of the Dragon. A larger lino-cut print that I did earlier this year in black ink and then the other day added some colour using my airbrush. And yes it says "Dragon" in Japanese as this print was actually a second I was going to throw out and was testing my separate lettering stamp (in red) for another print I’m working on, along with testing out the airbrush colour. End result turned out way better than I was expecting , so pretty pleased with the outcome.

Behold

 With Printopia week coming up, I'm looking forward to going to a couple of classes that my wife arranged as my Christmas present. Haven't been to an art class in over 30 years.

This is another one of the classic D&D monster prints I've done and that I've also made into a t-shirt.