Blood Draw

 Treatments are done for now, so it's time to get back to work on prints.  I have a few ideas that may turn into something, but the first physical step is to get my saw and cut a hunk of wood to be the block.  I had wood in my Studio, so it was just a matter of bringing my saw from the car.  I carried that and a yardstick in with me.  Dropped those off in my space and used the basement restroom.  Coming out of there I noticed how empty the kitchen area of the cafeteria was- all the appliances had been taken out.  No idea how many of them worked, but now they were gone, leaving quite a bit of space.  Dropped by the office, but found no one in there, so I went back to my space and got to work. 

I had a few pieces of the birch plywood I have been using of late, there on my table, so I cut a piece off of the one that had some parts already removed, leaving not much left of that sheet.  That's not a problem, as I still have one full sheet, and I can always get more if I need it. I cut off a piece of wood large enough for a 15" x 21" block.  This will be the largest block I have worked on since I got out of the hospital, and also the same size as my boardwalk prints, the diptychs. This is intentional, as I plan to put the resulting piece in one of the frames I have been using for those.  

What I am planning for this piece is something related to all my medical procedures, which have taken up more of my time than anything else I have done over the past few years.  In this way, it fits within the kind of work I was doing for my Fourth of July series, but much larger.   It actually does not refer to the recent cancer treatments, for which no blood was taken.  What I am anticipating is doing something about the many intravenous procedures that have been done over the past few years, which include routine blood draws (hospital and labs), IV drugs sent directly into my veins, which could relate to both the hospital and the places where I have had scans done, which often included contrasts, I guess to make things easier to see in the end.   Back when I used to donate blood, they also used to stick a needle into my vein to get the stuff, so I'm about as used to this kind of thing as most people and barely notice them anymore.  

Beyond that, I have no idea yet what this will be and the image I will use, the story I will tell.  I am leaning toward a standard blood draw, a small sample taken for analysis, something I get at labs and the hospital on a regular basis.  Compositionally, I think this also calls for a nurse in the image, head and hands especially.   I suppose I could draw this out of my head, but I would prefer to work off a live body  if I can.   Luckily, I don't have any particular deadline to get this done, so I can take a little time to see if I can find a suitable person to portray this character.  But for today, I cut a piece of wood and marked a border on it in pencil.  And in case I need to draw someone myself, I have started to go through charcoal drawing I have done in the past.  In these I was concentrating on portraits, and dealing with strong lights and shadows, which is kind of what I would want.  After all, with my portrait woodcuts I try to make them look like my charcoal drawings.  Here are a few examples from the archives:

I would have to make some changes to the hair, and put some clothing (scrubs) on them, but shadows have already been figured out, and that's the biggest issue.

Later I went back to office and at least Kaitlyn was there.  She had a lot of questions about relief printing (specifically linocut, but the printing process is the same as woodcut, and hasn't changed much in the past 500 years) so mostly I was talking about the kinds of printing tools I use, why I favor oil based inks over water based inks (she agreed about some of these reasons) and other stuff.  I don't know anything about her subject or style, just that she's having fun with the process, so I don't want to hit her with too much information right now.  Then Elyse came back from her errand, so we discussed some of the changes around the building (involving kitchens mostly), and what may be under the floor in the cafeteria (we have no idea).

For music I decided to go with one of Molly's discs, but it's also one I have owned and used to keep a copy of in the Studio- Doolittle by the Pixies.  I have written about this back in October of 2019, and probably some other times as well.  It's an important album in music history and in Pixies history, with all the usual Spanish language and biblical references that one might expect.  Plus, it's just enjoyable to listen to while working.  After that I tried another one of Molly's discs, but while it was short, I didn't care much for the album by Albert Ayler, and I gave up on it.