Adaptation by simple means of the technique of the wood engraving.

The wood engraving requires, according to the specialized manuals, to use fruit trees' wood as support for the ink, the press, etc.... But where to find boards of boxwood, pear tree, wild cherry ? It is not simple in our cities, far from fruit trees and where the slightest piece of wood costs a small sum. Where to find a press, etc... ??? In brief, all these constraints don't feel like, nor allow a simple fellow to know the pleasure of a printing on paper.
Then so much try with what can be more simply in the wooden storehouses. So much try with the medium sold loose and without press, without anything of complicated. It approaches the linocut.

But at first leave an idea!!

It can be an idea of Camellias, blazing flowers which participate themselves well in an imagination in boards of colors.
Because to make a wood engraving, it is necessary to think that every color is a different wooden board and thus a different printing. Then, with our simple means, it is better to limit itself in number of colors, not to put it too much to avoid a too big technical complexity, but not put it too little to avoid a chromatic poverty.
To leave an idea, we can indeed leave what we want to begin, of a drawing, or...

... of a photo for example.

Camellias

Bosco di camelie - Cannero Riviera, Lake Maggiore - Italy

The photo can be worked with a software of retouch, simple of use. It can have returned of 90 ° to adopt the vertical line more in coherence with the imagined final idea.

You should never forget that are needed few various colors in final; where from the idea to continue to work this photo with the aim of simplifying it, relieving it, to removing the useless to keep only the synthesis imagined in the head. For that purpose, the software of retouch of photos can be a precious help.

The retouched photo can give it, or an another thing. There, it is the wish for the painter, his imagination, his sensibility that work, the software is only an unimportant tool.

Camellias in composition get free on a simple bottom: two warm colors for camellias, two cold colors for the bottom. A bottom which will be worked in blues, camellias, naturally, in red.

The same software can be used to produce an image in two-color process, on the chosen basic colors, blue and red. Of the dark blue frame the composition.

When the worked idea seems good and sufficient to begin on the wood, it is necessary to think of the fact that the motive put back on the wood must be inverted. Marks of composition by rabattement small sides and diagonals allow to verify that the motive is balanced well and will simplify the transfer on the wood where the same marks will be applied.

Finally, the work on wood begins. It is necessary to allow a board for the blue bottom, a side for the ultramarine blue, the other one for the ceruleum blue, and another board for camellias, the same board will serve for stamping both chosen red, lively red in the first one and carmine in the second.

The medium is simple to work. Sculptor's tools agree easily to cut it: gouges, clasps, burins. The cut borders must be firm and weakened especially by numerous knocks of successive and hesitating tools. The color does not spread out necessarily everywhere and it indeed is to combine the uncertain outlines chosen by this one and the firm outlines of the tool. To mix the vague outlines of the color and the soft outlines of the tool would give only an result without vigour.

The chosen colors are ink line-engraving from Charbonnel. They are simply applied with a spatula in fine layer. The benefits of the spatula on the roller is simply a cleaning easy to the end for an result considered identical. The dosage is difficult, it depends on the consistency of the ink; the more it is soft, the less one needs.

The printing is made on some thick paper in a material which is a pleasure for the eye and which receives indeed the ink. The sheet is applied to the inked side of the medium. A roller in patisserie allows to apply well the sheet to the inked wood. It is necessary to pay attention at first that it does not slide when we pass the roller and then, by removing the sheet, not to make smudges. They are fast present when the color is liquid and when layers are multiple.
Between every ink application, it is necessary to wait its drying before applying the following color, if we do not want mixture (for example, for the blues of the bottom) or too much not to wait so that colors mix (for example, for red of flowers). The second layer of red is not applied to all the motive, what gives variations different from a sheet to the other one.
It is necessary to take boards of the same size and to settle comfortably on the edge of the first printing so that the motive is printed well there where it is necessary. Naturally, this mode of reconnaissance is easy, but obviously does not allow to realize engravings of precision. It is a choice to be well taken into account from the very beginning not to be disappointed at the end.
This technique sometimes gives results which remind monotypes because colors mix, spread out in a unique way every time, a little bit also in their good will. The result is not completely planned, to every print, the deposited color reveals its surprise and its brightness. It is the big pleasure to discover the printing, the mixture of will and fate.

Camellias

Engraving on wood - François Murez

Another engravings on wood : Wood engraving

Home