The other day Miss R and I went to Daniel Smith to pick up copic marker from the tooth fairy.  Miss R has now lost all her baby teeth – how sad!  We decided a few teeth ago that the tooth fairy might want to step things up a notch with molars so copic markers it is.  She uses these under cover of night to sketch manga.  She has reams of drawings under her pillow and notebooks and journals full of drawings.  Every now and then she lets me see one or two.  I don’t pry. 

So the point of my story, and I do have one, is that I saw Joe, my printmaking “boyfriend” (the kids tease me about all my boyfriends) and was embarrassed to tell him that I hadn’t even put ink to the woodblock that I started carving almost two months ago. 

He said if I was nervous about inking it up I could just do a rubbing of it with charcoal.  I hadn’t painted my plywood before starting to carve it, the first tip that Joe gave me.  oops.  I was just so excited to start carving.  I inked it up with Speedball water-based ink in copper and here are the results.

The second print is actually the same block twice, simply flipped and reprinted.  Yes, I too am amazed that I managed to line it up so well.

So now it needs something.  I’m not sure what. so I’ll think about that while I work on another woodblock.

Have you noticed the cool watermarks I’m now adding to my photos.  The latest edition of Windows Live Writer lets me do that.  I’ve not settled on a style yet.