Supermarket Battle part 16

Spring plans involving me and the Belmar Arts Council are starting to come together.  I have made arrangements for a spring offering of my woodcut class there, April into May.  In the process of researching materials and places to find them for my Mentor student at the university I am also collecting information I will need for the Belmar class, since the supplier I used for the class in the past has taken itself out of business.

Coming sooner is their annual Juried show.  As with all Belmar shows, one of the challenges is to find things to submit that I haven't shown already.  That alone would be reason to finally finish this latest supermarket print, started last year.  The application process involves sending a jpeg, and having a finished framed piece can wait, so if the ink isn't dry yet, no problem.  But I do want the print finished before I take that digital image, so the next step is to pull a proof and see where I'm at.  Last week I brought the block with me to my Mentor class and demonstrated how one can take a pencil rubbing of wood block to get a sense of how the balance of black and white is coming.  I decided it was good enough to try a proof without any further cutting.

With this Mentor class, pretty much everything I do as art is a potential teaching moment and this print has been no exception.  The rubbing demo last week, and today my choice of ink and paper, a topic I have been dealing with.  My prepared syllabus listed three common papers I have used a lot, and I even gave him a few samples last week.  For today's proof I went with a piece of Rives Lightweight, which is my standard choice for all prints in this series.  For ink I decided to try Gamblin's Portland Intense Black Relief ink, which I had found to be an inexpensive but decent ink, and a potential for my upcoming Belmar class.

All first proofs have issues, often linked to the wood absorbing the ink.  This one is no exception.  Some of the broader areas of black (floor tiles, figures) could have used a little more ink, but I had realized that some more minor cutting will be needed and this proof will not be needed for the exhibition itself.  I noticed the proof shifting on the block and decided to end the session and start cleaning up.  

In general I am satisfied with what I'm seeing.  One of the nice things about woodcut is you get what you expect.  I believe this is #24 in the series, and by now I know how to get them to have the standard supermarket look.  The image is fairly readable, with a good mix of black, white, and grays, and if the perspective isn't perfect (I'm not big on using perspective systems), it won't be a distraction either.  In the coming days, after the block has dried a bit, I'll go back in and cut away things leaving stray marks, maybe fix the areas around the lettering a bit, and then pull a nice clean proof to use for my submission.  I left the inky block in the rack at the Studio, but took the print home with me to study, and to show my student later this week.