Block Printing for the Soul workshop at NSCCD

On November 5th, 6th, 12th and 13th I taught a "Block Printing for the Soul" class at the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design at the Halifax Seaport. This and 2 other classes will be offered again early next year, I believe registration for those will open fairly soon.

The first weekend we focussed on black and white linocut carving, tools, proofing and then editioning them by hand with various different barrens.

Jeff's angry cat linocut that went from angry cat to angry cat with tongue sicking out to angry cat chewing cockroach to furry cat eyes over the span of two days of carving. I always love it when students really experiment with the medium while learning how to use the tools and 

Jeff's little print carved from Komatex. 

Patsy experimenting with letters and textures on her first linocut print. 

much carving and testing with graphite rubbing going on

David working on his Galaxy print.

Progression of proofs. Always fabulous to see how the images change throughout the carving process. 

David uses a paper stencil to keep the white paper edge clean. 

Finished handprinted linocut print. 

David's finished block and handprinted edition of three.

The second weekend, I brought along my printing press and taught my three students how to do reductive block printing. 

As always the Akua inks are working beautifully throughout the workshops. 

Everyone is very excited to learn how to use my little table top printing press. 

Jeff's beautiful pull of layer number 2. 

Registration of block to the paper is extra important when working with multiple colour layers in printmaking. Jeff's print is a good example of various problems you can run into with mis-registration to inconsistent inking. 

Here is his second layer printed on it's own in Magenta. 

David's reference image. 

David's first layer carved and proofed.

Inking his carving. 

David and Jeff's first layer printed. 

Patsy's first layer in blue. 

David's magenta layer printed and registered to the yellow layer. 

David's inked Magenta block. 

David cleaning excess ink of the carved edges of his block. 

Patsy inking her block in blue. 

Patsy's second and final layer was black. 

On the bottom left both layers printed together.