Psalm 29

How long should an artist pursue an idea? a dream? a vision?  

The "idea/image" came to me in a flash of inspiration, but getting that image on the block was going to be quite a journey.
  

I knew that I wanted to pay homage to Hokusai's great print, but how?  Lino seemed way too cold and a rectangular woodblock just wasn't exciting me, until I helped a neighbor cut down a tree and saw him slice off a chunk.

 Aha, that was it!  

I then set off on a journey to find the perfectly shaped stump that would inspired me and do honor to the image.  After a few hours of searching and a long explanation to the guy selling fire wood that I only wanted a "slice" of a log, I had three perfect slices.

But then I quickly realized two things: one was that these slices were not of an even and consistent thickness, and two was that they were far from dried wood.

First, let's get my favorite stump slice dried!  So I left it in my hot car all day long.  Uh oh, it's cracking, what to do?  The it dawned on me, this fits right into the Psalm even better;
⁵ The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; 
yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.
 I could make this work I was thinking, now to get the thing leveled.

Sweet Jesus, it's cracking even more!  OK, I can still make this work.  I think.  It took me a total of two weeks to finally get this block level, sanded and to stop it from splitting apart any more.  BTW, it usually takes me less than an hour to prep a block.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, the image I wanted to carve wasn't working on the first stump slice, it was splitting in an awkward way.  So I had to start all over again with one of the other slices.

 So, here is the image drawn on the block, prior to carving.

And, the finished carved piece (which still was not perfectly leveled, but good enough to work with).

OK, now many months later, I am finally ready to print!  The final printed image almost made me weep, I was so happy that it came out like it did.

Printed with Graphic Chemical black water based ink on a sheet of 15" x 22" Zerkal Book off white 145gpm paper.

Getting the ink to distribute evenly on a warped block was a nightmare, so I glued the block to a piece of 3/4" plywood and weighted the sucker down for a week.

And printed again.

Here are a few random pictures of the illumination process:

 And here is the final, full size illuminated manuscript:

Quite simply, this image is a gift from God, in it's totality, truly a gift.

Please leave a comment below.

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The Evolution of Psalm 11

Hello again, it has been awhile.
Being a finance person, who mainly finances commercial construction equipment, has left me rather frustrated as of late. Either no one wants to buy anything, or the banks won't approve those who do want to buy.
But I always have my carving, designing and printing, so all is not lost.
I have found that God always provides.
O.K., on to the print. After studying forever, I finally "saw" the image in my head. Not the completed image, but at least the idea of what I wanted to convey.

I was reading and the it came to me; that even though we think the world is falling apart and the church is crumbling, God is still in charge and watching from the heavens. I had to do some research to find an old stone arch as an example and came up with this one:

So, now I had to turn this into an old crumbling church. This is the first sketch i came up with:

I also wanted to figure out the sky. I have always loved this background, and have used it a few times in the past, but never to this degree.

I decided to try a variation on the idea, but really wasn't as pleased with the result. I liked it, it looks really cool,but it wasn't really right for this design. I am sure by the time I am done with this series, it will get used again.

I also decided to add the eyes to the clouds. Trying to introduce the idea that God is watching, He sees what is going on, he knows the truth:

But what do I do with the foreground?

That was driving me crazy. I tried this, but rejected it:


I you can see, I changed the background again.
But the grass in the foreground just didn't work.
Everyone had an opinion, all of which I rejected.

So I set the block aside and waited.

I decided to go ahead and start the block, begin carving, and pray for an answer before I got to the bottom of the print! Risky, I know, but ....


Here is the image with the background all carved out. If you will look close, you can see that I hid the title in the print, kinda my own "where's Waldo" homage, or just copying Durer, but with the title instead of my name.

Uh oh, I just realized I never scanned the final block with the foreground solution!

Well, guess you'll have to wait. I'll try to post it soon, along with the beginning of Psalm 12, which is already being carved.

I really need to start printing again, so I can move on to finalizing the complete layout of the page image. Who knows, maybe someday someone will make this into a book.
Until we meet again, Shalom.