Today's Class- I looked at progress on the latest block, and discussed some technical stuff. One of those things was the use of rubbings as a way of verifying the level of cutting that has been done without inking and pulling a proof. For that purpose I recommend newsprint for paper (or anything else very thin) and pencil or other hard graphite. Besides providing a quick read of your cut block without an inky mess, one can use the block rubbing to experiment with deciding what to further cut- if you're debating whether or not to cut a particular section, you can try erasing the pencil from that part of the rubbing and see the new value balance for yourself. If you like the new result, go ahead and cut the wood. If not, fill the pencil back in and consider removing wood from a different area.
We also talked a little bit about rubbing techniques can be used for creative purposes, and I discussed some of the things I used to do in my college days. For a while I was regularly employing a technique where I cut a wood block as anyone else would, but then place a sheet of thin Japanese paper right on top of the dry wood, then rolled inked brayers over the top of the paper, which picked up the patterns of the cut wood underneath, sort of like a rubbing. This approach does not lend itself to creating proper edition prints, but if you just want to express yourself, there are a lot of possibilities. In the above example there was just one block cut, but three layers of ink (red, blue, black) applied using viscosity techniques.
For next week- I'm hoping to see the new block proofed, if not completely done.
