Printmaking with the sun

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Today’s newsletter, “Printmaking with the Sun,” begins:

This is the season in Texas when the horny cicadas start screaming at the volume of leaf-blowers. I’m fascinated by cicadas, their long history in art, and how they make themselves available to metaphor, as in one of the Thirty-Six Stratagems called “Shed Your Skin Like the Golden Cicada”:

“When you are in danger of being defeated, and your only chance is to escape and regroup, then create an illusion. While the enemy’s attention is focused on this artifice, secretly remove your men leaving behind only the facade of your presence.”

An excellent lesson for those of us who use summer to escape and regroup.

Read the whole thing here.

(If you don’t have a paid subscription: The 20% off summer sale continues!)

Related reading: “Dragonflies and The Twisties”

Always inspired by Munari’s Roses in the Salad, I stole some bok choy remnants off the chopping block on the kitchen counter and made some prints to use later in collages. (See also: onions and peppers.)

Onions and peppers

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Here are some printing experiments with a leftover red onion and blue ink stamp, a la Bruno Munari’s Roses in the Salad.

https://twitter.com/austinkleon/status/1422287841380478978?s=20

I’m also a big fan of using peppers. (Or whatever leftover vegetables happen to be on the cutting board and the mood strikes.)

I’ve started incorporating some of these prints into my collages:

Carving Coconuts

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

It has been days since I saw Coconut The Owl, so in an attempt to bring her back into view, I spent yesterday morning making these block prints:

I use really cheap, simple tools. You can get most of what you need in one handy little kit online. (Try poking around the Speedball store.) I like to print on random newspaper pages at first, both to test the print and see what random colors do to it.

I’ve been inspired by Frasconi: Against the Grain, a wonderful out-of-print monograph of the woodcut work of Antonio Frasconi, who emphasized that anyone could make block prints and that you “don’t have to go to a special place, with a lot of heavy equipment. This is something you can do in any corner of your home.”

Block printing is also a wonderful thing to do with kids. My oldest can carve safely, especially with the soft “speedy carve” style blocks. My youngest, who’s a little more cautious, helped me with the brayer.