Christmas Continues

Made the trip up to Ocean Grove today and was pleasantly surprised to find the parking lot of the Studio building plowed and dry. Spaces were limited due to snow piles, but there were plenty when I got there. I spent about 3 very productive hours there.

I had a piece of wood that I had cut to the proper size for a boardwalk block before the holidays. I took that board, marked out the dimensions of the diptych panels, and started the process of surfacing it with wood filler. Set it aside until later.

Then I got to work on the Christmas card. First step was to clean up the block to remove those areas that had filled in with the water based ink. Above are the before (left) and after (right) versions of the recut block. Then I tore down another sheet of paper into card sized pieces and began the production run with my preferred ink. The first few showed some leftover texture of the built up surface ink from last week, but with some care I was able to overcome that. And unlike last week's unsuccessful attempt to do the print run with water based ink, there was no build up or filling in of details from first to last printed. Before long I had 15 copies of the card printed. A few have minor flaws, but the coloring will cover those.

Before leaving for the day, I took the now dry surfaced board outside to sand down to a smooth polished surface. Back inside I cleaned off the remaining dust, and redrew the panel borders. The cards and the new block came home with me. I'll let the cards dry overnight (a dab of drier added to the oil based ink should ensure that) and begin coloring tomorrow. As for the block, I can start working on that this week as well, and have something to show at next week's rescheduled critique group.