Illustration Friday: Stitch (21st Century DesignSpeak)

SEW WHAT?! Stitch Trivia—in tbe realm of textile design, there is a little-known embroidery technique called the balloon stitch. While the decorative threadwork has never actually been known to embellish fashionable lighter-than-air circus poodles or inflated latex birthday hats, we think it pops.

Illustration Friday Theme: Stitch
Artist: Debra Woolard Bender
Title: 21st Century DesignSpeak
Medium: Digital
Materials: Paint Shop Pro; Drawn with mouse; Fonts: Mistral and Bauhaus
Category: Cartoon

mother says
something's wrong with my poetry—
perhaps it's me

DW Bender
untitled senryu

rev. 18/01/08

Illustration Friday: 100% (For/Given)

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Illustration Friday Theme: 100%
Title: For/Given
Artist: Debra Woolard Bender
Medium: Intaglio (etching)
Category: Figurative

attuned in deep prayer
the air was charged with silence
upon entering
the great void wherein is all...
I have searched so long for you

DW Bender
untitled tanka
published in collaborative tanka series,"Between Breaths" (5/01)

Woodblock Printing: Sunbird, Artist's Proof #1

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o wild Icarus
how you melted into time
as one born too soon
yet I have arrived too late
to follow my desire

DW Bender
untitled tanka
published in the collaborative tanka sequence, "Between Breaths" 05/01)


Ouch, the camera flash was a bit bright!

Yesterday, I pulled the first artist's proof from the third block, "Sunbird," using water-based black Speedball ink. I handcolored the background with oil pastels, and melted the colors with a bit of citrus oil. I had thought about using water colors, but had read in Keiko Hiratsuka Moore's book, Moku Hanga, about kurepasu hanga (cray-pas woodblock prints), a woodblock printmaking technique using cray-pas (mixed crayon and pastel coloring sticks) instead of ink, swabbing the back of the baren-rubbed paper with benzine to melt the colors into the paper. The method was invented by her father, famous sosaku hanga artist, Un'ichi Hiratsuka in the 1930's, the technique being very popular among Japan's schoolchildren, according to the author. I decided to try oil pastels for the background, and may try the kurepasu hanga technique on a different block in the near future.

While I love the luminosity of the colors in the background, I'm not entirely happy with the result of my first experiment on "Sunbird." I think I need another type of solvent for the oil pastels to reduce or eliminate excess oiliness on the paper. Maybe I'll get some benzine or try mineral spirits. I also want to try using some different colored inks in various areas of the image. I won't cut separate blocks for various colors, but will ink the various areas in the desired colors. I don't think I want the sunbird to be black. So, I'll exeriment with both foreground areas and background. I also want to experiment with embossing powders (heated) as pigment. I'm looking forward to this experimentation. (Update: I bought a heat gun, some colorless embossing ink and clear embossing powder which I can sprinkle over or mix with colored and inked areas of the paper.

I also, at some point, want to try some encaustic painting, and see if I might be able to combine it with relief prints. I've decided to use this first artist's proof and perhaps some others as bits to cut out as shapes for future collages, and will cut out areas of future prints that would be otherwise discarded because of some flaw.

Illustration Friday: Soar (Between Breaths) Woodblock Printing

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Illustration Friday Theme: Soar
Title: Between Breaths
Artist: Debra Woolard Bender
Medium: Woodblock Print with Gigi font added digitally to scanned image
Materials: Rough exterior plywood siding; Speedball water-based ink; torinoko paper; hand-rubbed with bamboo baren
Category: Naive

tonight when dreaming
may I turn into a bird
nameless and homeless
in my solitary flight
I'll forget I have no wings

DW Bender
untitled tanka, 5/21/01

Dreams of flying and floating, other than swimming underwater, may be the closest we get the the sensation of flight. No doubt dreaming, whether sleeping dreams, waking dreams or those desires we call dreams, along with the gifts of creativity and imagination, all issue from the same deep well. Here is where we, unfettered, soar.

And here is my first recent woodblock or woodcut attempt, paired with and illustrating one of my tanka, a Japanese genre poem. (Jazmin, hope you stop by - yep, I did a woodblock!) I actually cut and printed this just a little before Christmas. When Illustration Friday announced "Soar" as the topic for this week, I was happy to use this image, the first artist's proof pulled from the block. The last three times I've cut and printed woodblocks were... #'s 1 & 2: around 1967 in high school art class... and #3: about 1977 in a community college printmaking course. So figure this 4th piece is done in 2007...40 years from the first and second ones and 30 years from the third. How'd THAT happen?! Time, pfft. Meh.

The wood used was the backside of a small, single block ripped from discarded and very rough exterior grade plywood paneling found in one of Grandma's infamous dumpster dives. It is a single-color print with a primitive or naive style design. The image was printed with Speedball water-based ink. I'll continue with some simple woodcut prints, but am looking forward to doing multiple block, varied color and Japanese technique moku hanga in the coming year. The poem's font is "Gigi," added digitally to the scanned image for the IF entry.

Through internet, email and Jane Reichhold's Tanka group at YahooGroups, in 2001, this tanka became the introductory poem for "Between Breaths," a collaborative, or symbiotic tanka sequence with fellow poet, hortensia anderson. Later, the poem was published in Elizabeth St Jacques' online magazine, Poetry In The Light. The original posting of the (untitled) tanka ("tonight when dreaming") can be found here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Tanka/message/4522
while the published collaborative sequence of the 8 tanka, 4 by each poet, can be found on this page:
http://members.tripod.com/~Startag/BetweenBreaths.html