Making a Print

Please take a three-minute break from your day, and make a print with me...

I had thought of doing a voiceover for this short video, but then decided it would be more meditative without an audio explanation - and with all that's going on in our fraught world, we need moments when we can step back.

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Since moving to our new home two years ago and closing our studio, I haven't done any printmaking. I've missed it. Needing to make some new prints for blog subscribers was the incentive I needed to get out the printing materials and figure out how to set up in this new space. Once I had things organized and had made some test prints, I thought of making a video of the process for the blog.

The first step is rolling out the ink on a glass or plexiglass sheet, using a rubber roller known as a brayer. In rolling, you're changing the consistency and tackiness of the ink. You can't print with it as it comes out of the tube - the ink would just slide around, and it wouldn't hold any fine detail. The rolling process changes that as the ink film becomes thinner and thinner on the glass. It's difficult to describe how to know when it's ready; I sense it both by what I see in the pattern of the rolled ink as it leaves the brayer, and by the sound the brayer makes when the ink reaches the proper consistency. (In the video, the ink has alteady been rolled out for several minutes; all I'm doing is coating the brayer.)

Then we're ready to ink the carved relief block. In this case, it's a linocut - this one was an illustration for Dave Bonta's Ice Mountain: An Elegy that I illustrated and published through Phoenicia Publishing back in 2016. You have to keep the brayer absolutely flat, and make sure every little bit of carved surface has a thin coat of ink, but that you haven't smudged any onto the background, which is easy to do. A few little marks will always come through when hand-printing, and that's part of the beauty of the process. However, we don't want smudges, unclear lines and corners, or inconsistent coverage in the solid areas.

Enlarged view of the relief block from a low angle -- in most areas, the difference between the carved and uncarved surfaces is around 1/16 of an inch.

Each relief block is different, and each has its own challenges - areas that don't want to print cleanly, tight details that tend to fill up, or large dark areas that don't print solidly unless careful attention is paid. We only learn each block's idiosyncracies by making test prints, seeing what happens, and adjusting.

A thin sheet of Japanese paper -- here I'm using a handmade sheet, made from a plant fiber called kozu -- is placed carefully on the block. I've marked pencil lines on the masking tape around the block to help me position the paper where I want it to be. Then I use my fingers to lightly stick the paper to the block. The transfer of ink begins with the use of a baren - mine is an inexpensive Japanese baren, made from a plastic disk covered with bamboo. Because it's flat, it glides evenly along the surface of the block, transferring ink to the paper.

Some people only use a baren, but I've never felt it did the job completely. So I use it to do an initial pass, and then finish the print using a wooden spoon. I've used this particular spoon for probably thirty years! It gives me the ability to change the angle and pressure, depending on what sort of area I'm working on. For a sharp, detailed section like the eye, or the ridges on the back of the frog, I use the front of the spoon and a smaller, more pointed stroke, while for a large flat solid area, I use the bowl of the spoon and a more circular stroke to get consistent coverage of ink onto the paper.

Once the print is finished, it will be barely stuck to the block, and you should be able to remove it easily. If the ink was too thick or not tacky enough, it can slide on the block and create a smudged image. If it's too thick or too runny, the details will be lost. If the ink dries too fast, as water-based inks tend to do, they may not soak into the paper well enough at all. But some oil-based inks don't dry fast enough, and you'll find an oily halo on the edges of each inked line. Each type of paper also affects the printing process, because it takes the ink differently. There are a lot of variables, and only experience can help us learn how to manage them. I now use Caligo Safe Wash inks, which are oil-based, but clean up with water.

Then the prints go on a closeline or a rack to dry - they're ready to handle in about 36-48 hours. Once I've taken them off the line, I inspect them carefully - out of this batch of 8 prints, I rejected two, as well as the initial two test prints. The accepted prints are then numbered and signed.

Although I work in many media, I sometimes think printmaking is the most satisfying. There's something both elemental and almost magical about rubbing the back of the paper and seeing the image emerge - human beings have been doing similar things ever since the first artist painted their own hand and pressed it against the wall of a cave. I also love the ability to make copies of a work of art that are neither photographic nor digital, and not mechanical in any way; each one is its own small, slightly unique entity, on a carefully-made piece of paper that feels natural and of the earth.