I am an artist living in beautiful Alaska. I work primarily as a painter and printmaker. I have a selection of original woodcut and silkscreen prints listed here in my shop. None of my prints are digital prints or copies of originals. They are all hand printed by me in small editions.
My color woodcuts are reduction prints which means they are carved from a single block. I usually start with 24 sheets of carefully measured paper. I begin by carving away the areas I want to remain the color of the paper, then I ink the block with my first and lightest color and run a print through the press. I repeat that process with each sheet of paper. Next I carve away everything I want to to remain that first lightest color, select a second color, and ink and run each sheet of paper through the press again. This process repeats until I have printed every color, usually between 7 and 10. My paper and block must be carefully registered so that the image always prints in exactly the right place. By the time I print the last color there is not much left of the block, so no more prints can be made. I carefully look over every print and eliminate any from the edition that are imperfect or do not match the others in some way. There is a lot of room for error, and that ever-looming drama really adds to the fun.
My silkscreen printing process requires a separate screen for each color, so the image needs to be planned out ahead of time and broken down by color. Most of my silkscreen prints are made by burning an image onto a screen that has been coated with a light sensitive emulsion. The image is drawn on transparent paper and placed under the screen in a darkened lightbox. The screen is then exposed to light. The light hardens the emulsion onto the screen where the light was able to pass through. The areas behind the drawing do not harden and are rinsed away, leaving a stencil behind. Paper can then be placed under the screen. Ink gets pulled across the top with a squeegee, forcing the ink through the stencil and onto the paper. Add some careful registration and a few more screens and you have a print.
Be sure to send me a message if you have my questions about my work. Thanks for visiting.