The first of my Flower series, Asphodel means 'My regrets follow you into the grave' in the language of flowers.
This was my first of my Flower series, and my first big print and truly the first of my descent into obsession with block printing, I think. This one started it's creation in Procreate and fourteen thousand different reference images. I don't actually draw flowers that often, but I've got that Floriography book by Jessica Roux, and I was really taken both by the drawing in the book itself and by the meaning. "My regrets follow you into the grave," is a hell of a meaning for a flower.
You can see where I had to make editing decisions between the digital art and the carved block. While I was designing with the medium in mind, some things are just a lot harder or more finicky in practice, and SOMETIMES you might read an article on image transferring for block printing, read "this was my least favorite method and the hardest to get a clean image out of" and in a fit of hubris decide it was a problem for that seasoned professional, but you're different. It might also then turn out that you are in fact not at all different and the image was flaking off actively as you were carving so there was a lot of guess work happening and the particularly fine-line detailing was naught but impossible. Don't know who that could have happened to, though. Not me, obviously, but I'm sure it could happen to anyone. Surely all of us experience unfounded confidence in skills we have never once put to use.
Unrelatedly, if you needed a second source to tell you not to do a PVC glue transfer for block printing, consider this it. Even if you get the image on all nice and proper-like it actively shreds itself as you carve so close together lines become entirely guess-work. That said, I was using speedy-carve for this, which has a lot of movement as you're carving, so perhaps doing pvc transfers on actual lino or the japanese lino would be less prone to cracking off. One of the other things I didn't see mentioned when researching this is that it will 100% dull your carving blades, as you're effectively cutting through paper.
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The finished piece is printed onto a 8.5" x 11" page of varying colors, weights, and textures.
If you'd like to purchase a print for yourself, you can do so here.
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