Second lake - First woodcut

After an agonising and frustrating wait of years and years I have finally got down and got on with doing my first 'proper' landscape woodcut. The wood is a Japanese plywood that I have had for a while and used for numerous things other than printing from. The image is the second of the Snowdonia lake series. This time the small lake, Llyn Idwal, reached by following the footpath from behind the youth hostel at the head of  Llyn Ogwen.

The name comes from the legend of Idwal son of Owain Prince of Gwynedd.  He was brutally murdered by being drowned in the lake and as a result of this crime, the lake has a desolate air and no birds will fly over the water. While sitting and drawing I took great care to watch for any feathered creature hurling itself, in defiance of the legend, across the lake. I saw many small birds turning back at the waters edge and although initially sceptical I was starting to almost believe there might be something in the legend. ( Like walkers around Loch Ness, keeping an eye out for Nessie, while knowing it is all nonsense and yet dying to be proved wrong)

Then a Heron, wings flapping slow and heavy with dignity, made it's ponderous way down the length of Llyn Idwal with not a thought for the legends it flew through or that it became the star of my sketch.

Here I have printed the first base colour and am now cutting it out. I am trying a new set of basic Japanese cutting tools, which until I started cutting wood, I hadn't worked out what a couple of the straight bladed tools are for. The main difference between lino and wood  is that wood 'runs on' along the grain, where as you can flick out a piece of lino at the end of the cut to finish neatly in a straight edge, with wood if you are cutting along the grain it doesn't finish neatly it rips on along the grain. So you get the straight bladed tool and cut where you want the particular mark to finish.

This means the cutting takes a lot, LOT longer. All the loose flicking cutting possible with a lino where you cut, flick out the unwanted lino and keep going dies a death with a woodcut. It is, has to be more deliberate and considered. it's cut, mark edge, cut, edge, cut. Though the harder grained wood is capable of holding finer marks than lino as long as the tools are sharp enough. You can also cut a bit loose if you gouge and then as you are cutting lift the v-tool up and out in the same movement. This can give nice fluid strokes which I used at the end for the pattern on the grass.

Detail of the famous myth busting heron. With sharp enough tools and enough patience you can get quite fine detail.

The block inked up with the third colour. The main difference with the wood was the way it absorbed my water based inks. Obvious really with hindsight. I should have sealed the wood with a size or PVA first. It meant I had to considerably over ink the block to get any kind of saturation of colour on the print, and apply much more pressure than usual to transfer that ink over. Which meant that any delicate detail I had painstakingly cut became crude due to the heaviness of the ink and pressure.

Peeling of the third colour. Seeing the mirror image, which looks like the complete base of a hill, makes me want to do a much bigger print of something more monumental and show its complete form rather than chipping away at the edges.

 Third colour applied, a chocolate brown. While drawing the water in the lake had looked a rich brown to me and I wanted that in the print.

Last colour applied and as usual it seems to change the whole balance of the print.  I deliberately chose a similar sketch and composition, along with colours to the previous Llyn Ogwen print as I wanted the wood to be the main difference and see what a difference it made. 

The difference? Other than the more deliberate technique needed in cutting and the change in inking up it felt, paradoxically for a harder and more durable material, to be softer and more subtle in effect than lino. Fine detail suffered due to the over inking/absorbtion issue, which meant I wasn't completely happy with the subtlety of the colour range but they are issues of my inexperience with plywood rather than intrinsic qualities of the medium. The hills did seem larger, and as previously, mentioned more 'monumental' than the Llyn Ogwen lino which I liked.

I got a strange (well perhaps not that strange) urge to try and arrange a trip out to New Mexico and monument valley to attempt the sculptural landscape out there.

I will 'wood up' again but it will need a different bigger and bolder subject matter and work will have to be done on the ink absorbtion issue. Oil based inks??

This looking for the monumental will lead my eye on my next drawing trip to Snowdonia, while the next print will be back to lino. Perhaps only 2 colour with more cutting, perhaps finally a multi-block print!