I've been doing some random sketches scattered into the main work of book manuscript and painting. Here are a batch of them, including two different trips to Muddy's bake shop. Cupcakes were called for.

I've also been working more intentionally on people practice lately. I have to get myself out of the house and away from my easel to do this, though.

Here is. The carving process. The top right is the earliest, with just the moon and stars cut out to print the sky. Once I had the skies printed, I could carve down to the tree. Before putting the tree on the good backgrounds, I proofed it a few times on newsprint to make sure it looked like I wanted it to, carved a little, proofed it again, etc. Finally when I had it ready, I went ahead and printed on the sky backgrounds.

I finished a new print for my letterpress. I haven’t done too many prints on it, mostly note cards, since it doesn’t do big images well. It was made for type, and my blocks have a huge amount more dark space and much less white, which means it’s hard to get enough pressure across a full dark surface to print it evenly. I had mostly given up for several years after getting it, but it occurred to me fairly recently that it would be a lot easier to print smaller blocks on the treadle press instead of inking each by hand and carrying the plate and paper together to the proof press. So I started thinking of designs where the foibles of the bigger press would be an asset.

I’ve been thinking about nocturnes a lot lately, and it occurred to me that a dark tree against a dark sky would work better (be more visible) if the sky were not fully dark. The mottled printing texture would be great. I also have wanted to try a reduction print. Usually I do separate blocks for each color in a multi color print, but I thought if I’m locking a block into the metal chase to put it in the press, that would hold it steady and secure if I could leave it in there to print, so my blocks wouldn’t have trouble lining up.

For a reduction, you carve a bit, and then print, and then carve more before printing the second color. The upside is the block stays steady. The downside is that you can’t proof it with both colors and then adjust. You’ve already committed and printed the first color and gone past the point of no return.

Even with the block in a steady place, I still lost some prints when the paper moved on me. I ended up with an edition of 28 on 9x11” paper. It was a good learning process for me, but I still think I prefer doing separate blocks so I can color test ahead of time and get the colors just right.