Walnut Tree - woodcut

"Walnut Tree" woodcut with monoprint, 7x9" on Owara Mulberry. Buy now at my Etsy shop.

Sometimes when I get frustrated with my painting, or run into some sort of obstacle, shifting to block prints seems to work things loose. I've been carving the block for this print over the last couple of weeks without a clear idea of what I'd do with the background. I was thinking about printing just the tree in black, when Jana's blog inspired me to work with monoprinting again. This print is one of several variations I printed this evening.

I also used this block to experiment with working with a different way of transfering the image to the block. Most of my block prints use photographs I take as their starting point, and usually I print out the design and then use transfer paper to trace the outlines I want to carve away. In the tracing process, I'd make some decisions about how to simplify the shapes in the image. But this time I printed the photograph of the tree on very thin paper, and pasted the image to the block. Japanese style printmakers will recognize this as a hanshita. All my adjustments to the image were made directly on the block.