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| I took this photo while exploring country roads on a beautiful October day. I want to capture the warm sparkle of the leaves amid the cool green pines. Also, that little path into the dark woods is intriguing. What if there were a sunlit clearing way in there? |
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| The first carving is printed on the letterpress, to create yellow leaves |
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| I took that first carving, carved away the parts that should stay yellow, and made orange leaves |
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| I always make a sharpie drawing on clear acetate and transfer it to the linoleum, to serve as a guide for carving. |
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| I mix yellow, and black, which (oddly) makes olive green, so I add red to make brown. The inked carving, and the print |
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| The next carving should print dark loden green. But brown underneath will make the green even muddier, so I mix a clear dark green to compensate. After printing, it looks almost like dark chocolate, in florescent light. But in daylight it’s loden green. Both look good! |
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| And now for the transparency experiment: I print the evergreen boughs black, letting the unprinted paper create white highlights… |
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| I do a new carving of evergreen shapes, carving precisely, to register perfectly on the black and white evergreen boughs in the print. Add a lot of transparent ink to the teal green mixture, and print over both black and white highlights. It worked! Two colors from one printing! |
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| That little white clearing in the distance needs to be filled in with yellow. The tiniest block I’ve ever carved… |
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After weeding out the imperfect prints, I have an edition of 175 prints. Here’s “Autumn Glow,” signed, numbered, and all dressed up in Thomas Pafk’s beautiful handmade frame! See it in my online store |
