A few weeks ago, I was feeling pretty disconnected from my creative self. I was feeling uninspired and unmotivated.
Naturally the snowball effect started to happen. I planned to do things but didn’t follow through. I beat myself up for not following through. I wasn’t making things but I would beat myself before even making it because dear god, what if it wasn’t good enough? I made excuses. Then I made excuses for my excuses. And then I got stung by a poisonous Portuguese man of war and just had a giant pity party.
Then I saw this.
And I finally started to get back on track.
I vowed to MAKE MYSELF do something new. Thankfully, I had been talking to the owners of the local shop OMG in East Nashville about doing more work after selling my Pretty Bad Words card series. They wanted some new cards and a custom design for the upcoming tomato fest. One of the main things I was beating myself up about was not making things so I knew I wanted to do something with a handmade element. Printing costs were too expensive for what I wanted to do at the time so I started brainstorming how to print the projects myself. Block printing felt like the obvious choice and I had taken a printmaking class in college so I decided to pick it back up again.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the technique of block printing - here are some of the basics:
Materials you need include:
A carving block (could be wood, linoleum block, or rubber block)
Carving tools
A Brayer to roll the ink onto the block
Printing Inks
Materials to print on - I love upcycling old paper, canvas, fabric and even old books
A clean surface or tray for the ink
A Burnisher or Press (almost any hard object can work)
Pencil & paper for transfers
Band aids (I’d suggest 3-7 - ha)
Time & Patience
I tried a few techniques using traditional materials like wood and linoleum blocks like I had learned in college and a new one using adhesive foam and clear acrylic blocks. I was a little nervous to approach the type considering my original design was pretty intricate, but fattened it up a little bit in the tracing and carving process. I had been wanting to experiment with metallic inks for awhile and decided it fit the concept well so I bought some silver and gold and snuck into Watkin’s printmaking studio. I tried the press there but like the texture best when it was printed by hand, so I ended up hand printing each and every one. Here are the results:
I’m really happy with how they turned out and they have more character than any digital print could have. So with that, I’d like to encourage you to go out and do something you know you’d enjoy but have been putting off - because you can do anything good.
