Fire Rats for the New Year

Process, process, this was such an uphill climb. I wanted to make something for the Chinese New Year and I don't know why I had this compulsion. Maybe because I felt I owe rats something, having experimented on them in my youth. I rescued our control group and o! my wonderful parents, as I remember all the critters we housed at
various times.

Or is it my longing for fire. for glassmaking, for what fire enabled me to do. I have yet to figure out how to render fire, how i will add it to the stamped image.

I began by looking at rat pictures. Then I drew several.
But these didn't become the stamp, mainly because the stamps were being created for ATCs and I couldn't think the image small enough, though i did scan them in and shrink them to ATC size......

Finally, a couple came to me to be translated from pencil to Mastercarve and then carved.

 I was surprised that all I had to do was rub the image on the mastercarve and it transferred. Mastercarve is not my favorite material but this ease of transfer is something I will have to remember.

Assessing Materials

I want them to last, I want to use them up.
I read that linoleum doesn't last long.... and
this cache of 5 by 4 linoleum blocks, arriving as they did with the ancient
speedball materials, are just perfect. Firm, defined, easy to carve.

I'm told that this is how linoleum used to be... the best.
This linoleum I lucked into is the best of the materials I have tried:
the Dick Blick's Inovart Smooth-Cut Mounted Printing Block (weird, shredding kind of action)


Nasco's mounted linoleum block, ( really hard to work)
Nasco's Safety Kut circles (too wobbly)



Art Gum erasers (okay but very small)
Staedtler Mastercarve Artist Carving Block (also a bit too soft).






foam on boards ---- ewwww dented, marred by mere leaning on it the wrong way... and yes you can just scratch into it but that means it shows fingernail scratches.....





I've been using Speedball gouges, linozips and knives...
all ancient it seems, based on the lettering on the boxes and the prices
in the the literature eg. Baren for $3.70, cutters and handle $1.70,
block printing press $14.95 (! it is now around $65)
Based on conversation in the Carving consortium archives, I have blades from the golden
era of Speedball in terms of sharpness. My challenge is to keep them sharp.




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I am digging my autumn scene as the image to use in the autumn swap, more than the three leaves.
Thus far I've benn using Brilliance archival ink... It occurs to me that if i had the lip/eye sized pads i could apply color discriminately on the stamp.

I did use rocket red and copper on a couple of pressing... on cardboard and on HMP. The hmp, didn't pick it up that well. So i moistened it. then on that stamping it blurred.... it's impressionisitic but not the stamp....

The warm weather is encouragin and almost overstimulating, so I may work up my courage to roll out ink on the benchplate i bought.