July 16, 2011

I wanted to see how laser cuts of my drawings would translate as woodblock prints, so I took the Woodblock Weekend Workshop with Joe Marshall, at The Drawing Studio in Tucson.

3 laser cut drawings as woodblock prints:


MY DRAWING

First I edited a drawing of mine from April 28th in Photoshop Elements -- Filter/Adjustments/Threshold... Then I reversed the image -- Image/Rotate/Flip Horizontal. Finally I added a black border around the image, anticipating that we would ink the whole woodblock print with a large brayer. The border turned out to be unnecessary, since we used a small brayer to ink the lasercut section by section. I saved the image as a TIF:



Align-Rite used that TIF to laser cut my figure image into a 1/4 inch laminated birch board, 12 x 12 inches, from Woodworkers Source. That cost $45 in laser cutting time.



Partly inked laser cut board:


Hand printing a proof with a wooden spoon:


The border turned out to be ugly:


Later, I added Wood Filler with a small palette knife, hoping to raise the empty part of the board, so that it would print black:


I probably needed to add more Wood Filler, but I liked the combed texture in the small part that did print:


MOISES COLLABORATION

I went through the same process above with a January 9th drawing that I collaborated on with Moises. The Photoshopped TIF:


The laser cut board:


The board hand inked:


The print proof:


I added Wood Filler and then hand cut into the board:


While the final print was weaker, it also gained a little extra flair for the hand cut touches:



TANYA'S PORTRAIT

I thought a more finished drawing might translate better in the laser cut process. So I asked Tanya if she would lend me one of her portraits. Then I purposely darkened the image too much, thinking that we would later tweak the portrait, cutting into it by hand, to make the print work. However, the laser cutter pulled out the tiny specks and fuzz from the scan. I was surprised at how well the laser cutter picked out the detail, and decided not to hand cut this piece in the end. The TIF:


The laser cut board:


The inked board:


The print proof:


SMALL HANDCUT PIECE

I did a quick, small woodblock cut to see how the knives worked (using the same image we translated into a large relief sculpture by yet another computer process). This woodblock was entirely hand cut however:


The inked block:


Final print:


CONCLUSION

The straight woodblock cuts came out the best, not only of mine, but also those from the rest of the people in the workshop. The computer laser cut prints were probably too mechanical, and I anticipated that criticism. However, the laser cut woodblocks did work, and perhaps with better images and more preparation, something more interesting might come out of the process. I suspect that a combination laser and hand cut woodblock would be acceptable. I do think these prints came out better than the first laser cut woodblocks I did.