For the love of block printing

A peek at some of my favorite recent art projects

Hi friends,

I have been very busy the past few days working on an illustration project. The project is a linoleum block print, which is my favorite way to make art. I did my first linoleum block print in third grade when I was in an after school art club. It was of one of my favorite things: a tree! Unfortunately, I don’t have any copies of that first block print, but it’s stayed with me over the years nonetheless.

Block printing can be a labor-intensive and time-consuming process, and this project has had me so busy that I didn’t take time to plan today’s newsletter. Instead, I thought I’d share with you some of the block print projects that I’ve done in the past few years.

We’ll start with some minis! I love miniature things, and I love the challenge of making tiny art. Combine those loves with my love of block printing and you end up with an assortment of miniature block prints (which could also be called stamps, I suppose). The largest of these is about 1.5 inches square:

The tiny squirrel is about the size of my thumb nail.

I often work small, but not usually that small. Here is a 5 x 7 block print I did when I took the Children’s Book Pro course through SVS Learn. In that class our project was to make a book dummy for a retold fairy tale. I chose Hansel and Gretel, and this block print was concept art for Hansel and Gretel’s homestead:

Here’s a personal project I did just for fun:

If you’ve been a subscriber for a while, you may remember this polar bear, which is a block print I designed for my Christmas cards a few years ago:

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I hope to eventually illustrate a book (or books) using block printing techniques. That’s why I’ve been so hard at work with this project the past few days. I’m trying to push myself to create illustrations rather than stand-alone pieces that don’t really tell a story.

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There are many picture books featuring block print illustrations. Two of my favorites are My Friend Rabbit by Eric Rohmann and Song of the Water Boatman by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Beckie Prange.