Summer Night
"Summer Night" 10" x 12.5" hand printed on mulberry paper, edition of 14.
A couple of weekends ago I spent the night sleeping on a porch of a remote cabin far away from the city lights. The sky seemed so bright against the trees, even with no moon. And the constellation Scorpio was dominating the southern horizon. That weekend was the inspiration for this print.
Normally I don't worry too much about the image reversal of printmaking. I just design my images straight on the block and then enjoy the mirror image shift of the printed image. But I really wanted the position of the stars in this print to be somewhat true to life. So I was a little irritated to realize I had carved the sky block without thinking that Scorpio needed to be reversed. I'm not sure anyone but me would have noticed, but fortunately the sky was not a particularly complicated block to re-carve. And it was great to get my hands dirty at my printing table again.
This print is available at my Etsy store
posted by Kris Shanks @ 9:07 PM
4 Comments:
This is beautiful, Kris! Simple (just two blocks?) but so rich -- just how the night sky looks away from city lights. I wouldn't have known that the stars were backwards, but I'm not a scientist...
Lovely... captures the mood just perfectly.
This is so beautiful it makes me want to sleep outdoors again. I haven't done it in years (and when I did I didn't sleep much...but then I don't sleep well indoors these days either, so why not!) A treat to see!
Thank you all for your kind words. I'm so happy with this print I'm planning a larger version. I've got my reference photos for the trees all picked out - now there's nothing to do but get carving!
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