It’s not really a New Year’s resolution, but I have wanted to get back to doing some printmaking this year. Now that the holidays are done I can sort through all the various project materials that are strewn about and focus on one thing at a time. I’ve also been lucky enough to be at the shore this past week which gives me oodles of time to sketch, carve and plan.

I absolutely love carving blocks for printmaking. I have blocks that I’ve not printed because it was the carving that seemed to be the goal at the time. So I’ve decided that my process this year will be to carve “test” blocks, and print them on quick sketches of various backgrounds. I’m using these for the test blocks because they are cheap and I can pick them up at numerous local stores.

In this way, when I can go on to carve the “final” block with greater confidence in the outcome (since you can’t “un-carve” blocks).  For the final block I’ll be using larger pieces of wood.