A New One

I’m also starting a new one…Trying to get two done before my show in September…BTW, September 9th!!! The official date of my show!! @Open Ground Studios in Seaside, 1230 Fremont Blvd.

The new design

Admittedly it is not one of my typical designs, I guess, but this one I think is more for my mom than anything else 🙂 She told me to do one with cranes because she likes the elegance they embody (I’m guessing….XD). She’s a bird lady 😉

This snow crane is a symbol of Japanese culture and is also known as the red-crowned crane (for obvious reasons…). It represents luck, longevity and fidelity. When the snow crane mates, it mates for life and when a snow crane migrates, it will fly for hundreds of miles, a real show of strength. It really is an important symbol in Japan and with a bright red crown on a snow white brow, it’s hard not to imagine the Japanese flag.
Sadly, if I’m being completely honest, I don’t think I can finish this piece before my show in September…BUT!! There will be a nice work-in-progress piece to show 😀 So I guess that’s fine…plus it’ll be done for sure by the open studios tour at the end of September!! People will just have to come back and see the finished piece 😉

The keyed print!!

The cherry blossom print is done!!! And actually has been done for a little while….O_O solly….

Renewed Beauty

🙂

Ready for the key…to the kingdom!!!

Just kidding…But I am ready for the key for this cherry blossom print!! I’ve already gone through all the other colors…just haven’t been posting them here…SORRY!!! 😦

But here we go:

After the green layer: dark pink (kinda…)

This layer started to look a bit more purple-y than I would’ve liked…but I wanted to see how things played out with it as is. I have a weird habit of doing that…Not going to lie though, I was a bit worried about this color…

Carving out the places I wanted to keep dark pink

After the dark pink I did:

DARK BLUE!!!!

This is now officially my new favorite color!!! I mean, blue has always been my favorite color, but in a print…YAAAASS!!!!

*POP!!*

Though the dark pink layer looks even more purple-y….:( But once again, you can’t go back and change something in a reduction woodcut….SO FORWARD WE GO!!!

Brown

And wow…This is why I’m a little crazy….I make myself go insane with flip flopping with worry….>__< SHE’S GORGEOUS!!!! ♥

BUT I’m really looking forward to my key layer….the anticipation is killing me….But again, can’t rush the drying of each layer….I’m soooo ready though ♥_♥

Ready ready ready….

Photographing the Ladies

I decided to get my ladies photographed professionally so that I may have digital copies of each print. Not only can I then keep photographic inventory of my pieces, I can now print them digitally and sell them a whole lot cheaper!!! 🙂 A win-win!!

Plus they look so pretty under these lights :]

Layered Beauty

Giant printer….!!!

I was referred to Coastal Giclee in Carmel by Katie from my studio. Rick did an amazing job photographing and printing my ladies and I’ll definitely be going back!! 🙂

Each print went from their original 18×24 image on 22×30 paper to a 16×21.5 image on 18×24 paper. Still a good size print, but not as big as the woodcut originals. As of right now, I have “Ideal Beauty” (the 1st print), “Layered Beauty,” “Uncaged Beauty,” and “Nostalgic Beauty” (my newest wisteria print) as digitals. More to come!!! 😀

Herro!!!! Again…

Sorryyyyyy!!! >__< I’m sorry for not keeping my website as up-to-date as I should be…Let me explain; The benefits of having instagram: I don’t have to type much XD Plus I can post photos of tiny everyday carving things and not really have to have a reason for them…heehee

Anywho!! I have been working on my newest Geisha!!! It’s a cherry blossom one and I’m quite excited and happy with it thus far. I am now on color number…5? I printed number 4 “today” 🙂 But let me back up a bit; Here are some past photos of my print-in-progress:

Carved out the whites

 

Color number one: block and print

 

Curly Q

 

Carved out the places I wanted to keep yellow and then printed pink!!

At this point, I was starting to think that the color was more of a peach tone….I was…okay with that…Plus I didn’t really have a choice; I tend to stick with the color that I make right off the bat. I like to believe that the color that comes out was meant to be the color I use. Unless I can tell right away that the color will be too dark, then I change it. But like in my other geisha, I’ll just switch the color order instead of changing the color toooooooo much.

Moving on to the next color, number three: blue

Pink vs blue

Slightly grey looking

More baby blue-ish

Depending on lighting and the fact I ran out of ink part way through printing this layer, some prints have a more….grey-ish tone to them while others are more blue-ish. I think some of the prints may not have printed very evenly which led to more of the pink/yellow showing through hence more muted blue. I learned to kind of like how it came out. It gave it a more Japanese color scheme with the more muted colors, very mellow.

My next color was to be green:

Carving out the background

This part took forever….I knew it would, but then I went to fanime and got sick…so the process got stretched out to almost two weeks…it was supposed to take a week…or less…XD Nope! Didn’t happen.

But I’m glad it took so long. The results left me a bit speechless to be honest:

No more grey-ish blue!!

On the day that I went in to print this, one of the ladies at OGS (Open Ground Studios) asked what color was next. When I told her green, she was confused due to the fact that she believed I had already printed green. I told her that the previous layer was actually blue….she didn’t really believe me…That blue-ish grey was just not contrasted enough with the yellow and the pink to pop. That all changed with this color layer. She saw this print and agreed that the color before this one was most definitely blue XD WIN!!!! 🙂

Top left: The block; Bottom left: Block and paper before press; Right: Block and print after the press

I plan on printing my next color, a dark pink, hopefully tomorrow. I have to go pick up my new digital prints on Tuesday (I will be selling these digital prints for a lot less than my original pieces) and therefore probably won’t have time to print then…but I’m super excited 🙂

But anywho, I’ll do my best to keep my website up-to-date!! Stay tuned! 😀

The Key

Today is the day that I finally finished my Geisha of…like 8 months…ermerger…YAYYY!!! I don’t think it’s quite hit me that it’s done…o.O I skipped posting the printing of the maroon layer because I was frantic in getting it done (I had to go to work and only had ~1.5 hours to finish 16 prints…yeah…me cray cray…). In this post I have both the maroon and the “key” layer represented (if my phone will send me the photos I want of the maroon…they may just get posted later..XD)

With my new shirt instead of a black snack, I was ready! (I wanted to change “stuff” to a different “s” word…XD)

So with my block all ready and carved out, I printed my final layer!!

Hot of the press!!! Kind of…

My gorgeous Lady 🙂

You can’t tell from far away, but the registration was really badly off for the light lavender color on quite a few of the prints, if not all…eff-ing oops…sad panda on that…but from far away and squinty, it is FABULOUS!! Ermerger…after all that hard work, she’s finally done. Just don’t look too closely…XD

As for the maroon layer (my photos finally sent and I can get them uploaded):

Rolling the ink

Maroon!! 🙂

So now that I’m done with this geisha, it’s time to start planning out the next one…gyah! I’ve found out that the paper that I use, is limited. Well, obviously, but I mean the rest of the paper that I had originally bought about two years ago, was only partially prepared (meaning registration holes and double taped). The rest of the stack still in the wrapping was left untouched. DANG IT!! I forgot that I had stopped ~3/4 of the way through my paper while I was at the studio at UCSC prep-ing them. So now I have to figure out what to do next…I might have some prepared paper left in my garage, but that still doesn’t solve the problem I will eventually face. *sigh* anywho…gotta think up my next project and get it started once May hits. Not a lot of time…at least I get a few days to fret over what to do next…OKIES!! BAAAIII!!!

This is the final layer by itself. I kind of like the B/W…but I’ll probably watercolor the three I printed of these.

Behind in posting…

Oops!!! So I just posted photos of my wood block up close and personal, saying that it was ready to print purple…but I already did!!! Yesterday before work, I scrambled around and got my dark purple layer finished!!

YAYYY!!!! 7/9 colors done!!

 

I’ve posted photos of the process before, but I want to show it once more:

I start off with my color laid out with the roller on a giant glass table…

Barney purple, yo.

After I get the color evenly spread along the roller, I roll it onto the wood block. It’s key to get the layer of color to be even across the whole block, if not, you get patchy. And no one likes patchy…unless you are a pirate!! ARGH!!

“1st Because Yuck”

Once it is evenly rolled across your block, you have to run it through the press. The registration pins and holes are EXTREMELY important in this step. Notice the tape and holes along the print paper? Those need to be placed exactly on the pins or the layers will print off. WHICH HAPPENED WITH THIS PRINT!!! Hence, the “1st Because Yuck” written along the top…

 

Such a pretty profile!

The good thing about viewing something from far away is that you can’t see the mess-ups 😀 For example, her profile is GORGEOUS!! But if you look carefully at the flower on the fan, you can catch the mess up on layers with the red showing through…dammit. But that could just be me…everything is starting to get a bit fuzzy around the edges with registration…the curse of multiple layers!!!

My purple snack!

My snack for the day was a pack of PURPLE grapes. Ignoring the fact that the label says “red seedless grapes,” they are OBVIOUSLY purple in color…

Lovely Ladies!

The final two colors are going to be AWESOME. Maroon for her kimono and black!!! ERMERGER. The black will be freaking crazy…SUPER EXCITED!!! 😀

Also, I now have an instagram (yay….-__-) so find me at amendo418 if you’d like to follow!

Some carving views

Here are a few photos of some close-ups on my wood block.

This is now going to remain red

It was kind of a pain to do these little buddies, but I think it’ll look good….XDI think….Gosh darn it…

Using the “V” gouge to get that detail

At some point I want to get some more professional grade tools, but as for right meow, these tools work great 🙂 Heck, the first ever geisha print I did, I used freaking Niji tools…those were like…$15 for 10 tools!! Cheapest tools you can get…but they worked XD Goes to prove that you can make beautiful things from the seemingly worst materials. BAM! ^__^v

I am now ready for purple!!!  I believe…I carved out a few of the loopies in the corners so I hope it ends up looking alright…O_O

On a roll(er)!!!!

Heck yes!!! Today is the day that I finally started the more dramatic colors!!! RED!! It’s funny though because I wasn’t planning on red today…I actually wanted to do my dark purple, but something told me no. Could’ve been the ink screaming at me to not do a darker color first (had just made the purple color and was staring at it for a while…), could’ve been my need for the dramatic color of red in my life…could’ve been the flaming cheeto fries that I bought at the 7/11 next door. What ever it was, I’m glad it spoke to me.

Beauty, eh?

I am very very very happy about how this buddy came out today. It just wasn’t catching my eye or my breath when I looked at it before, but now…ermerger, I almost cried when I pulled my first print. Wow. I LOVE IT. It’s got the dramatic flare that I needed. Pur sure. The colors are now starting to separate themselves and it’s turning into something awesome. Though now that I say this, and you see the colors separating things out, you start to notice the iffy places in design…I won’t tell you where because I’m hoping that I’m the only one who sees them XD oops…

This is the starting block for today

The leaves are done

Close-up on the vines and the leaf outline

It’s kinda funny how my snacks for the day tend to be in the color theme for my next layer. It was unintentional today for me to print the red color, but I think my consciousness was telling me something. I had gone to 7/11 to pick up a soda for my lunch and saw the cheetos…they called my name so I bought them. I was going to print purple, the cheetos told me not to…byaha! Inner Peas was my snack for when I printed green…weird…but if this is a trending theme with my printing, I’m scared for the final black layer…I don’t particularly like black licorice…maybe I’ll buy some Japanese nori or something…XD

Red snack!!

With tired hands and a sore back, I can now relax tonight with a cold beer and a kid movie XD I did the hard work today, I deserve some relaxation.

Unfortunately though, I found the boo-boo print. The one where my registration got so out of whack for purple it is pretty much a dud print meow.

“1st Because Yuck.” ’nuff said….

So yeah…this print is officially the first print that I test run on!!! BLEH.

Looks fine, you say? Looks pretty and awesome and great, you say? (Thank you, but you are wrong, my friends…) Here’s a close up as to why…

Just look at those bags under her eye!!

Look at that purple showing!!

Yeah….Yuck.

Anywho, on to carving for the darker purple! Again….o.O heehee….And by on to carving, I mean, time to watch that movie…:D ‘gnight!

What I did on Easter

I got to the studio a little after 11am this morning and started carving out my green layer. I also happened to find Fear The Walking Dead series online for free. A day full of carving and zombies commenced!!! And I do mean a FULL day. I left the studio around 4:45pm for a quick run to TJs because I needed human interaction, sad, I know… (Jeff was at the studio for a good portion of the day, but he was studying, couldn’t bother him XD)

I came back, cleaned up, finished my last episode, and finally left for good. It was 6pm. GYAHHHH!!!! Summary of my day:

Leave the leaves alone!!! (jk, can’t do that…they need to be green)

More leaves and vines

The leaves on her fan (oh! missed a spot..)

Finish the leaves and then on to her kimono!!

ERMERGER…it’s been a whole day and change and I’m still hurting from this XD Tired back, tired hands…tired brain from being zombie-fied….but hey, I caught up with the show and am ready to go!! (rhymed. heck yes.) Anywho, back to carving her kimono and getting ready for the next layer. The green has already dried!! YAYY!!! That was freaking quick…O_O