Advanced Practice 2

The work I presented  for this module was inspired by a poem written by W. B. Yeats, entitled

The Stolen Child

The title of the work is:       Unquiet Dreams    

Words taken from a line in the poem: 

"Give them unquiet dreams"

Mythology and Irish legends were subjects that Yeats was fascinated by and informed much of his early poetry. He wrote The Stolen Child in 1886, at a time when there were many stories about fairies snatching away children and this created fear and anxiety in the subconscious of a lot of people. The poem describes a world that "is full of troubles and is anxious in its sleep." 

The woodblocks for the above engravings are made from two rough-cut "slices" from the trunk of a cherry tree. Preparing the blocks for engraving revealed many shrinkage cracks and defects in the wood which I tried to repair at first but then looking more closely at the beauty and shape of the pieces I decided to try to find a way to, as far as possible, create the compositions around the shape that was formed by time and the elements. The result is that I practically allowed the shape of the tree itself to dictate both the scale of the work and the final composition.

Part of the work required for the Advanced Practice 2 Module was to make a trial publication. As an experiment in comparing the two techniques of woodcut and wood engraving I used one of the compositions from the images above, enlarged it by 50% and changed the format to the oval shape. The process I then used is known as the multi-block method. First I made a key block (or line block) to make this black and white print:

I prepared another four printing blocks and applied the coloured inks I chose on each block to make the images shown below:  

I then made the final colour woodcut print shown below by inking and printing all four colour blocks on a sheet of Japanese paper and printing the key block over the top: