Drawing the Print

One of the things that I always intended to do when I got back into printmaking, specifically woodcut, was to try to make prints that had a degree of fluidity. For this print, I deliberately made an impromptu, free sketch from an image I was developing as a larger pastel drawing.


This sketch was roughly 8 1/2" x 11", done in gel-tipped pen, and had the looseness I was after. However, I would need to enlarge the drawing so that the individual strokes were thick enough to have the impact I desired at the final print size: 20" x 25".


I scanned the original drawing, scaled it to the final size, and cleaned up unwanted marks. Since the printmaking process will reverse an image that has been transferred to block and then printed, I flipped the image so that it would be right-reading when the final print was pulled. I laser printed the image in four tiled sections, carefully butted them togther so that the drawn lines matched up, and I was ready to mount the print to the wood block.