It has been a while since I posted so I decided to talk a little about what I’ve been working on this past year. I’m fortunate enough to live near areas of great natural beauty and chose to concentrate on my neighborhood in the winter for my subject matter.

These woodcuts are done in the style known as a reduction print. With this type of woodblock, one only uses one block instead of several blocks for the color layering. With these prints, I carved the block, printed as many prints as I needed, then carved again. This process was repeated until the final layer.

These pictures show the three blocks in various stages of completion.

Printing the layers.

Completed framed prints.

This type of block is sometimes called a “suicide block” or “suicide print” because the print matrix (the wooden block) is being destroyed while the image is being created on paper. When the series is complete, one cannot go back and reprint or change the image.

Larger images are included in the gallery under “Relief”.