Praeterita

As regular readers of this blog know, I am a maker of linocuts, and a teacher of the linocut printmaking process, and therefore a huge fan of Picasso's linocuts. The British Museum in London released this video in relation to a 2014 acquisition of several of Picasso's 1950s linocuts. It's got some nice insights into Picasso's process.

After a busy week preparing for the opening of my show DIA DEL PADRE in Chicago (see previous posts for me), I finally have the time to blog about the classes that Patty and I taught at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts last weekend. The slideshow of photos above starts with the linocut class, a one-day workshop in which I led three talented and enthusiastic people through the basics of transferring/drawing an image on the block, cutting, inking, and printing. By the end of the morning, everyone had made at least two prints, and by the end of the afternoon the drying table was covered with many more. The next day, we taught another one-day workshop -- the Journal and Sketchbook class, with ten people. We did four combined drawing/writing activities: quick-fire drawing; writing a scene; "take a place", which is a Story Workshop activity; blind contour drawing; and blind writing, where we ask students to write and cover up each preceding line with a piece of paper th...

Number 96 in the series is in honour of Black History Month in the USA. It's about a print by African-American artist Elizabeth Catlett, who was born in 1915 and is still alive. She was interviewed on NPR a few weeks ago, relating to an exhibition that contains her work and the work of people influenced by her, that opened in Brooklyn recently.

Here is a great video of Brazilian linocut artist Samuel Casal at work in his studio. It really conveys in just a couple of minutes how direct and fun this process is: Source: Monsieur Bandit Blogozine .   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

'Linocult, a blog and related twitter feed devoted to all things to do with linocut printmaking, published an interview with me today. Thanks go to Dailey from Brooklyn for his commitment to the cause of block printing. Have a look at the blog some time: he publishes great looking linoleum prints every day. Link:  http://linocult.com/post/7762836693/interview-with-philip-hartigan   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Speaking of Ray Bradbury, as I was a few weeks ago , I was inspired a few years ago to produce a big linocut based on Bradbury’s story “The Illustrated Man.” The block is buried in a drawer somewhere, half-forgotten, and I only remember it whenever I see Sam Weller. At 24” x 18”, it’s fairly large. A print from the edition is now in the Ray Bradbury Archive, which is run by a dedicated chap in Indiana. I don’t think it’s too bad:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader