Today's postings

  1. [Baren 44567] Baren Member blogs: Update Notification (Blog Manager)

Digest Appendix

Postings made on [Baren] members' blogs
over the past 24 hours ...

Subject: Still More Messing
Posted by: Ellen Shipley


I really must stop messing with the design and start carving.  I'm not sure what I think of the addition of garland around the window.  I think it actually detracts.  Or it might balance the color.  But which?

I think I can get away with carving 2 blocks.  One for the green and one for the black, with the ornaments tapped in.  I'll have to see if that's practical.

carve

Working on composition balance now.  This is what it'll look like on the 9"x12" block.  It looks like crap because I overlay images in PageMaker.  I'm only interested in the placement of image and white space here.  The tree comes a little past the center of the block, but the window is a more dynamic image.

I've decided against the garland.

Huh.  I've just noticed the center of the window is the center of the card. 


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This item is taken from the blog Pressing-Issues.
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Subject: Crossroads and Connections
Posted by: Ellen Shipley

I went to see the opening of a fiber art show last night because I know one of the artists, Lauri Mraz.  Crossroads featured in the notice is her work:


Imagine my delight to find that connected to this gallery was the studio of a fellow printmaker, Sonia Romero from She Rides The Lion on Etsy:

 http://www.etsy.com/shop/SheRidesTheLion?ga_search_submit=Search&ga_search_query=she+rides+the+lion&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade. 

We know each other thru Printsy, a team of printmakers on Etsy, but we had never met in person.  That was a pleasant surprise.  8-]

You can check out Sonia's website here:  http://www.sheridesthelion.com/

And check out the Printsy blog here:  http://printsy.blogspot.com/

This item is taken from the blog Pressing-Issues.
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Subject: Where to find good people?
Posted by: Dave Bull

I don't normally do this, but today's post here on the Mokuhankan Conversations is simply going to be an 'outbound' link (although trust me, there is a connection with our woodblock work here!). The Wall Street Journal has a number of associated blogs, and one of them is 'Japan Real Time', in which they follow both news and 'trends'. (If I had no access to any other news source here in Japan, this is the one I would follow to keep in touch with what's happening in this society.)

Anyway, long story short, given that the single biggest 'problem' facing me at the moment for getting Mokuhankan onto its next level is the question of finding some more 'good' people, today's post on the Japan Real Time blog is extremely interesting.

Japanese Women Quit Unrewarding Careers

"It?s no secret that Japanese women are a woefully underutilized talent pool in the domestic labor market. But in a departure from the conventional wisdom that women tend to drop out of the workforce for family obligations or because a baby has arrived, a new study shows that the overwhelming reason for the female labor exodus is because their careers are unsatisfying."

So why mention this just now? Well, I was talking to a 'little birdie' the other day, and heard ('peep peep') that printer-trainee Tsushima-san - who has now been coming here for just over four months - looks forward to coming to work here each day because this place is ???.

Translation? The dictionary gives us: . . .
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This item is taken from the blog Mokuhankan Conversations.
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Subject: Stumbling ahead
Posted by: Sherrie Y


I did say I was going to take this linocut a little more slowly than the last one... but apparently I didn't move quite slowly enough. I printed the third color and started carving for the fourth when I discovered... woops! A section that was supposed to remain green didn't get removed before the ochre pass went down.

Hmmm... what's wrong with this picture?

I considered leaving it alone... it's not critical to the overall image. I decided instead to remove all the material for the fourth pass except the little area in question.

I rolled-up that area with leftover scraps of the previous green ink plus some white. Even with the addition of white it's still darker than the other greens (because it's over TWO other colors, not one, and not benefiting from the luminosity of the bright yellow below it) but I don't hate it. I'm calling it pass three-and-a-smidge.


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This item is taken from the blog Brush and Baren.
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