Printer Solstice is back and all about colour!

 

Arctic fox and Aurora, linocut, 9.25" x 12.5" by Ele Willoughby, 2023

I always enjoy the #PrinterSolstice series of prompts. I gets me started on my year of printmaking, often trying new things. This year the prompts are all about colour. I am all about colour... but this will be a challenge, as I often carve first, plan colours second. Especially the first two prompts: the absence of colour and tetradic colours.

Snowflakes, blind embossed print by Ele Willoughby, 2023

I love colour... so the absence of colour is less than obvious for me. I could certainly work in black and white, but I decided to go all out and make a blind embossed print without any ink at all. Using moistened water colour paper, a carved lino block and my etching press, I made a print with the texture of snowflakes.

I had to look up "tetradic colours." It's a colour scheme of four colours equidistant on the colour wheel. People describe it as vibrant or even aggressive.  So, that took some planning! I have been thinking of adding to my collection of prints of arctic animals with the aurora. I read about a legend from Finland that the aurora is cause by the "fire fox," a fast running arctic fox whose big busy tail brushes sprays of snowflakes up into the sky. So I loved the idea of a print which straddles the natural history and the folklore collections of prints. The colourful Northern Lights gave me a way of working four colours into a cohesive design.

The rest of the prompts should be easier for me, but I still have a lot of planning and imagining to do. They remaining prints will feature: complementary colours, cool colours, analogous colours, monochromatic colour scheme, split complementary colours, spectrum of colours, CMYK colours, triadic colours, primary colours and warm colours.

Time for some weather prognosticating rodents

Since we're catching the tail end of a blizzard here, it seemed nice to contemplate the end of winter.* We might imagine that the end of winter is in sight, and the celebrity weather-prognosticating rodents may not see their shadows next Monday, hahaha! Anyhow, I printed a new batch of thermochromic Groundhog Day linocuts, with disappearing shadows.

I'll be busy on Groundhog Day, myself. Etsy Canada is hosting another Summit, here in Toronto, for team Captains and Leaders from coast to coast. I ought to get cracking on my presentation.

*Apparently, we'll avoid getting really dumped with snow (unlike our neighbours to the south) because it's too cold and windy here. Um... I guess we're lucky?

p.s. Good luck to those of you who aren't lucky and are expecting almost a metre of snow.

Making things for the little one

So, we're also busily making things for the expected addition to our family. Here's a sneak peek at our progress. RJH is under the weather, so these less than impressive photos are my responsibility. I'll get him to take some proper ones when we're finished. I've taken a suitably terrible "before" photo. The room was RJH's office. He had a desk with computers (yes plural), an old single bed, an ironing board and in the photo, it would appear that laundry was in progress. I confess, it didn't generally look this bad. There were white walls, and forest green curtains. His office has been moved to the basement, which now has a proper floor, rather than carpet on cement. This house is about 85 years old, and was built before people decided that precision might be important in construction, or that people really like closets. So, there are no truly right angles and the rooms were not designed with closet space in mind. Luckily, it's been owned by people who really like closets, since it was built, so all the bedrooms have a closet and there is a linen closet, but these are closets built for very small people. So, I confess, I have claimed the entire closet of the master bedroom, and RJH has been using the linen closet and the office closet. For now, we've cleverly installed a new lengthwise rod in the master bedroom closet (previously, the presumably tiny people who wanted a closet but had little to hang, had a rod which was short and widthwise, blocking access to half the space). Also the closet is under the sloping part of the roof, so much of it would actually be too low to allow RJH to stand which bolsters the imperial closet claims of his less-than-tall wife doesn't bother me much. He also built me a stand for my shoes. He thinks I have too many shoes, but clearly has never lived with a real shoe lover, because I really don't have that many by the standards of most women I know (who also do not need to use valuable closet space for steel-toed boots, but, I digress). Our immediate solution is that for now, RJH will continue to use the closet and ironing board in the soon-to-be completed nursery room.

First we painted it yellow. By "we" I mean I gathered dozens and dozens of paint samples, we negotiated and then he painted the room with (allegedly) zero VOC paint, which is safest for expectant mothers and babies. I actually don't mind painting and am pretty efficient, but generally, the received wisdom seems to be if you can avoid exposure to any chemicals you probably should. Also, to be honest, I've never been accused of gracefulness, and was a bit accident-prone before my centre-of-mass changed, so I am humouring my husband and have agreed not to climb chairs or ladders until after the baby is born. So, he got painting duty. For "zero VOC" paint, it certainly smelled. I wondered what I was smelling if it wasn't volatiles - volatile inorganic chemicals? I don't know. I'm not a chemist. Perhaps it was for the best I didn't spend hours painting the room.

I actually drew up several different mural plans. The room has one south-facing window, but it faces our neighbour's house, so it's not actually very bright. We both agreed we wanted something cheerful and colourful. So while my sky mural was the winner, we avoided sky blue because it would be too dim and shadowy. So, after RJH had painted the yellow, I started planning and thinking about how clouds would look. I actually tapped mock-up paper clouds to the wall, before I painted the clouds in white (much less smelly) zero VOC paint. Then, I added my block printed stork in turquoise.

We went to Ikea, and much to our surprise, bought a crib. Their higher end crib was greatly reduced in price, so we just bought it. It feels very solid, gets good reviews and safety ratings and can convert into a toddler bed. We also got some cheerful fabric and a new light fixture (decorated with clouds). We're not entirely convinced we've succeeded with the light as it casts a harsh and surprisingly focused beam, which was not our goal. If we lower it, so that adults are too tall to see the light directly, RJH will hit his head. We're still considering options. I bought some blackout fabric and made curtains. I decided not to be too insistent on a theme and try to have everything match; that just seemed a little too controlled. What was I going to do? Tell people who might want to give gifts to the baby they had to be yellow or turquoise and relate to a cloud-filled sky? But, I did choose fabrics which contained yellow, white and turquoise, as well as other colours.

I'm also working on a baby quilt, of course. Its main colours are yellow, turquoise and grey, but it has different patterns and my block printed animals. RJH meanwhile, is working on a wooden rocking horse and building a change table!  When I was a toddler, my Uncle Bob made me a rocking horse, and I love that our baby will also have a handmade rocking horse. (Uncle Bob is in his eighties now, and no longer putting his woodworking skills to use supplying furniture to the youngest members of his extended family. He took up woodworking after having a massive heart attack, days before I was born. He was actually sent hundreds of kilometers to Toronto General for surgery, so coincidentally, he was one of the first people to meet me and pretty well the only member of my extended family who could reliably remember the day, since I guess my birth was tied in his mind to a life-changing near-death experience. I gather now it would be unlikely he would remember me at all, let alone my birthday. My own rocking horse was inherited by my uncle's first grandson, so I no longer have it. So, for me, this handmade rocking horse seems particularly special).

I am also gathering a box of things for the baby, including the bibs, block printed camera and soft alphabet blocks I've made. Yesterday, I added a small woolen coat, lined with a map print cotton, fit for a wee explorer (based on this tutorial). I have more projects in mind. If you happen to be interested you can follow my thoughts on decorating rooms for wee people or my growing collection of tutorials for DIYs for babies and small children.



I guess this baby will be growing up in a family where it seems normal that if you want something, you can make it with your own two hands. That seems to me to be a good place to be.

m for minouette (& mermaid and moon)

In a little over a week (eek!) the Toronto Etsy Street Team will be hosting our handmade market. I thought I might make a 'minouette' banner, so that was as good a reason as any to start a series of monogram letters, beginning with 'M'. I carved a seated mermaid combing her hair by the light of the moon, to embellish my 'M', and I printed it in Payne's gray on a variety of Japanese kozo (or mulberry) papers, each 14.8 cm or 5⅞ inches square. I plan to print it on fabric too, to make my banner.


If you're in Toronto, I hope to see you at the 3rd annual Toronto Etsy Street Team Handmade "Spring" Marketplace! Who says you can't have a spring market mid-summer? Not only will I be selling at this event, but I'm one of the organizers. It's near the centre of the Universe ever-hip Gladstone Hotel, just south of Queen St, between Dufferin and Ossington, and promises to be a fun event, with lot of handmade goodies!

clouds and unicorns

The OB asked for a unicorn for his birthday, so I've been making more.

Carved in linoleum, and printed on variety of Japanese washi paper (kozo, or mulberry and chiyogami and katazome-shi) and European patterned paper is a unicorn, strangely amongst a welter of lovely umbrellas. This piece employs the techniques of printmaking and collage. I am making a series of these multimedia; each one is unique. These are the 11th to 14th in the series.
Dimensions are approximately 12.5 inches by 18.5 inches (32 cm by 47 cm).

Also, I made a third edition of my cloud classification linocut, because the 2^nd edition sold out. I found some lovely brilliant sky blue paper from Nepal, but sadly, it was not fun to work with. It do not accept ink well, and sometimes fibres would be stuck to the block. So much for the idea of more affordable coloured paper.

making cameleons

1. Carve block

2. Mix inks with thermochromic and photochromic powder.

3. Ink block and pull prints.

Dolly Spectrum

I made a second print of my Dolly-the-cloned-sheep block. I was initially thinking of a multi-colour Dolly print, somewhat in the vein of a Warholesque print at the Year of the Rabbit show. I was a bit worried about borrowing that aesthetic - the balance between a little nudge-nudge-wink-wink allusion and cliché is not easy. I also wanted to communicate a sense of movement to allude to the cloning: one Dolly-two Dolly-three Dolly more... So, after printing Dolly on a number of coloured somegami origami kozo (or mulberry paper) sheets, I switched gears and formulated the rainbow-spectrum plan (ROYGBV). The successive Dollies, from red to violet, are placed at smaller seperations to give that sense of movement, like fanning a deck of cards.

The image is a stitched scan. We figured out how to do this with my new scanner and Photoshop, with some swearing and some laughing, but ultimate success last night. So now, I can scan the rest of my larger prints! Sometimes it pays to be extremely stubborn. ;)

Niels Bohr Block Print

This is a block printed portrait of Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962), subject of the Mad Scientists of Etsy's November Challenge. Bohr is an obvious choice - the Nobel laureate not only was one of the central figures of 20th century quantum mechanics, godfather of the Copenhagen interpretation, he was known for his generousity, open-mindedness, and clear ethics (which cannot convincingly be said of all of his contemporaries). He advocated sharing knowledge and the peaceful use of nuclear energy. He was also known for taking long walks and thinking out-loud. I often wondered about what Mrs. Bohr thought, faced with his incessant rambling on the interpretation of quantum mechanics.


One of his most famous contributions to quantum mechanics was the Bohr-Rutherford model of the atom. In the print, Bohr is shown in front of the Bohr model of the Hydrogen atom (all the concentric circles are actually at the appropriate spacing, proportional to the n the orbit number squared*). Physicist knew that the atoms were neutral, and yet positive charge was highly localized, in what we now know as the nucleus, from the Rutherford Gold-Foil Experiment. As is traditional in science, this experiment isn't named after those who performed it (Geiger - yes, as in Geiger counter - and Marsden) but after their supervisor, Lord Ernest Rutherford of Nelson. They shot alpha particles (Helium nuclei: 2 protons and 2 neutrons, but all they knew was that they were small and had charge +2) at a very thin sheet of gold foil. Gold can be pounded into sheets which are scarcely a few atoms thick. Anyway, some of the alpha particles bounced right back, which Rutherford famously described thus,

It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you. On consideration, I realized that this scattering backward must be the result of a single collision, and when I made calculations I saw that it was impossible to get anything of that order of magnitude unless you took a system in which the greater part of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a minute nucleus. It was then that I had the idea of an atom with a minute massive center, carrying a charge.[2]

So Rutherford proposed his model of the atom by making analogy to the solar system. He postulated that the positive nucleus is like the sun, with negative electrons orbiting like planets. This model seems to have reasonated with the public (and you still see absurb, outdated images to symbolize atomic physics, with a dot and various elipses around it) - but it's wrong. You see, it suffers from ...wait for it... spiral death! Physicists are a melodramatic bunch. You see, accelerating charges, like electrons going in circles, give off light, hence loose energy, so would be expected to spiral into the nucleus and annihilate.


Bohr proposed that the orbits of electrons were somewhat like planetary orbits (though circular, and at specific quantized distances). To explain how orbitting charged electrons didn't lose energy he stipulated that perhaps they simply weren't allowed anywhere but the specific orbits. They could lower their energy state if excited by falling to a lower orbit, giving off a specific photon of a specific colour related to the specific, quantized, difference between energy levels. This also explained how the spectra of gases had distinct, thin, spectral lines. I've illustrated this with the Balmer series - because it is composed of lines which are visible to the eye (H-alpha is red and caused by a jump from the 3rd to 2nd orbit; H-beta is cyan and caused by a jump from the 4th to 2nd orbit; H-gamma is indigo and caused by a jump from the 5th to 2nd orbit; and H-delta is violet and caused by a jump from the 6th to 2nd orbit). I've shown both the quantum jumps (squigelly arrows - squigelly lines are traditional for photons) and by the line spectrum below Bohr.

This is a first edition print (one of eight) on Japanese kozo (mulberry) paper, (12.5" by 17").

*The fact that I needed to make my concentric circles at appropriately spaced radii (and the line spectra are at the right spacing too, of course) probably reflects on my sanity in some way, but you know, how can I resist the Bohr Hydrogen atom? I mean one can actually solve it analytically from first principles! How cool is that? Even though, in theory, one ought to be able to continue with this logic and derive all of chemistry as a simple application of quantum mechanics, it very rapidly becomes too complicated and we must rely on computers.

Spontaneous performance art in Parkdale

As I walked home along Queen St W through Parkdale, I passed the helium balloons caught in the telephone wires. The elderly man in front of me stopped. He was wearing a surgical mask and didn't look very steady on his feet, but he picked up his cane and brought it to his shoulder like a hunting rifle. He aimed at the balloons and then mimed the backfire as he shot them with his imaginary gun. One of the street punks said, "Hey old man, you living in the old days?" He pretended he didn't hear and continued on. A few paces along he found something else he thought he'd like to shoot and whipped up his cane, bringing it perilously close to my face. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said, but I merely swerved and assured him it was alright. He has the freedom to play make-believe.



The wheatpaste man evolves. He lost his face. His sign has been defaced, and now, he has two bows.











Ever seen the gnome on the train tracks?



I like the sneaker wearing sneakers... fractal footware.








I sort of love the naiveté of the geography depicted. There appears to be a prototypical Frenchman, somewhere approaching Moscow, a Chinese man lost in Siberia, St. Basil's and please-tell-me-that's-not-Stalin are deep within China. Meanwhile, Brazil is north of Newfoundland and Central America didn't make the cut. In a clear indication that we do not live in igloos here, there is an igloo firmly planted in Greenland.


The stencil read:

You have not
yet fathomed
what a creative
entity you are
because you
doubt what you
are when you
sease [ sic] and allow
yourself to
flow forth you
will have your
perfect
instrument
of expression
simply allow you
to be and dont
compare your-
self to
anyone