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Description
This dapper little fellow came out of a demo that I taught last night for a whole slew of teens from the YM/YW group, showing them how to hand-make relief prints. I cut all the detail and most of hte open areas ahead of time and let a couple of the kids cut the open areas of the block too so they could get a feel for the materials, then I hand-printed it with a bamboo-leaf baren (if you're hand-printing, a bamboo baren is definitely the way to go. Those speedball ones suck massively... the next best thing to bamboo is a wooden spoon) using water-based relief ink. I prefer oil-based inks, but on a workshop like I was doing for that many kids... there's no way oil would ever have worked.

I was trying to do something fun and cute so the korean girls there would appreciate it, yet simple and hinting at my usual darker preferences for the boys, and I had my wife's friend Laurel (who adores skulls) in mind as well. Plus, who doesn't love a skeleton in a top hat?

Description
This dapper little fellow came out of a demo that I taught last night for a whole slew of teens from the YM/YW group, showing them how to hand-make relief prints. I cut all the detail and most of hte open areas ahead of time and let a couple of the kids cut the open areas of the block too so they could get a feel for the materials, then I hand-printed it with a bamboo-leaf baren (if you're hand-printing, a bamboo baren is definitely the way to go. Those speedball ones suck massively... the next best thing to bamboo is a wooden spoon) using water-based relief ink. I prefer oil-based inks, but on a workshop like I was doing for that many kids... there's no way oil would ever have worked.

I was trying to do something fun and cute so the korean girls there would appreciate it, yet simple and hinting at my usual darker preferences for the boys, and I had my wife's friend Laurel (who adores skulls) in mind as well. Plus, who doesn't love a skeleton in a top hat?