I spent a long, and thoroughly enjoyable day in Hartland Village with Adrian & Clea Beasley on a woodcut print workshop arranged by the wonderful Merlyn Chesterman RE. We spent time cutting woodcut print blocks, then inking and printed them. It was amazing how accessible this media is. With sharp gouges and blades we created woodblock prints from loosely drawn images. The magic happened when finally we inked the woodcuts, laid the paper down, and with a ball bearing baren impressed the paper onto the inked block. There is something quite magical about lifting the paper and seeing your image printed crisply onto paper for the first time!

Above is a quick image of mine of a wind blown tree. To the right is a monochrome image with the initial cut at the bottom and a more refined image at the top. Due to the lack of close observation of the tree I thought to myself it was slightly disappointing, but I was learning fast, after all it was my first image. To the left, Merlyn suggested that I create another block to make the image two tone composition, so with a graduated grey/blue background the image was greatly improved and the final print can be seen at the top of this post. The two matching blocks can be seen in the left hand picture.

Above are a mixture of today’s offerings and for our first attempts I’m rather impressed. I thought that my friend Adrian Beasley’s image, next to my tree was very strong with it’s powerful movement.

Photos above by Clea.