My Process

I thought I'd share a little behind the scenes of what goes into my illustrations. 

Everything starts as a sketch, usually a pretty small one, that is scanned, enlarged and flipped in Photoshop.  The printmaking process is in reverse, so to save my sanity I simply flip it backwards in Photoshop and print it out to transfer to my blocks.  It can be a little tricky wrapping my brain around the reserve image, as you'll see later!

Some prints I carve everything on one block and print the entire block.  For this image, I decided to create the image in a series of 'stamps'.  For the background, I cut a little square and used a stencil of the owl.  After that I created belly stencil and did the flower print.  The owl and words were also created with as stamps and printed on the image. 

Here you can see the print before the owl.  If you missed the print, you can see it here:

Now, printmaking may see like a scary process - but there is an 'undo' button.  If I make a mistake I simply carve out the part and make a stamp that replaces it.  As in the 'a' that I carved the wrong way. So there you have, one way I make my artwork. 

Question Everything

New piece I worked up today.  4 color blockprint.  Liking this new stuff.  I'll show more of the process later this weekend - I took photos!

Illustration Friday: Equipment

 Equipment needed for the best smelling laundry ever:

1. clothesline

2. clothespins

3. gentle breeze (use country air for best results)

4. sunshine

5. a few hours

My entry for this week's Illustration Friday.

Mono print and block print with some hand-coloring.

A few of my favorite things...

Here are a few tools in my studio that I can't live without:

My new favorite tools!  I bought these a few years ago, but never really tried them out until recently.  I was using my trusty speedball lino cutters.  If you are into printing, I recommend picking up a set.  The fine tipped tool allows for great detail and the other tools help me carve my blocks lickety-split!  They are called Palm-Grip Carvers and they are saving my poor old hands.

My box of Sennelier pastels isn't looking quite like this picture anymore.  They are now well loved nubbins!  I need to order some replacements, stat.  They are so rich and creamy, they are like the chocolate truffles of oil pastels.  Yum!

While I have several different types of colored pencils, these are by far my favorites.  Lyra Rembrandt Oil-based Colored Pencils are wonderful, no waxy build-up and the colors are so beautiful. And on the sketch pencil front, I'm strictly a 2-B and above gal.  Sure the others are nice, but I need some heft to my lines.

This is Blick Wonder-Cut Linoleum and it's probably not the highest quality stuff to print on and if I were doing large print editions I'd have to rethink what I use.  But it carves so fast!  I like to call this stuff Wonderflonium.  (And if you don't know what that is, watch Dr. Horrible right this minute!)

And finally I couldn't do my job without my trusty Speedball Water-Based Inks.  I've been enjoying experimenting more with mixing my own colors and printing in multiple colors.  They dry fast, so I must work fast.  But they clean up with water and I'm all for using less chemicals in the studio.

So there you have it, my art making essentials! 

All photos from the Dick Blick website, where i buy most of my supplies.