Level Up Your Printmaking Skills: Create Two-Color Art Prints

1. Welcome to the Class!: Hey, I'm Liz. I'm an illustrator in New Mexico and I'm so excited to welcome you to the studio for today's class. Today, we're going to be diving deeper into the world of block printmaking, because my guess is that you've tried this craft before, fallen in love, and now you're ready to up level your skills. I know that leveling up in printmaking can feel really overwhelming and confusing. You can go down a whole rabbit hole of online tutorials trying to figure out which methods to try, and then leave feeling even more confused than when you started. That's why I'm breaking everything down in this class step-by-step so that you can move into two color block printing with confidence and ease. In today's class, you'll learn how to use two techniques to create block prints that contain two colors instead of just one. We'll be using food as inspiration to create a series of five colorful art prints that you can send to friends and family, frame in your home or add to your portfolio. To give you even more inspiration, you can download a set of free intermediate block printing templates at my website, at www.printsandplants.com/colorblocktemplates. This class is for you if you have prior experience with block printmaking, mainly, if you understand the materials and how to carve, ink, and print your blocks. If you don't yet have this experience, not to worry. You can take my Intro to block printmaking course to learn more, and then dive back in here once you have the basics covered. You can find that class by clicking my name, going to my profile, and it'll be under the printmaking section. But if you already do have that experience and you're ready to go, then let's dive in. 2. Gather Your Materials: I've included a materials list in the resources document in the Projects & Resources Section of this class with direct links for where to buy everything. You might already have some of these materials on hand if you've tried block printmaking before, or if you've taken my intro to block printmaking class. If you already have things on hand, that's great. Use what you have and just fill in the rest. For this class you're going to need three 4 by 6 inch carbon blocks. The reason there's three is that I'm going to be showing you two different techniques. One of those techniques will require two blocks and the other technique only requires one. If you want to follow along with both techniques, then you'll need three blocks total. I recommend this brand Eco Karve because they are made from recycled material and they're fairly easy to carve. Speedy Carve is another great option for beginners. I still like to use it because it's so soft and buttery to carve and makes carving just a breeze. You'll also need blank sheets of 8.5 by 11 inch printer paper that's just white for sketching your designs. Those can also come in handy for test prints. You'll also need a linoleum cutter handle and blades. I love this set, the number 1 set from Speedball because it contains five different blade sizes in the handle. I love having that range of blade sizes for carving designs. Since we're creating two color art prints today, you're going to need two colors of a Water-Soluble Block Printing Ink. I really highly recommend that for this practice you choose a lighter color and a darker color. You might do yellow with black or yellow with dark blue or maybe a white green with black. But just make sure you have a lighter color and darker color in your choices. An optional material is what's called an ink retarder, and it comes in this small tube from Speedball. This is really handy if you live in a dry climate like New Mexico because it can help to extend the drying time of your water-based inks. They like to dry out pretty quickly when they're rolled out onto your acrylic sheets or your inking tray and so this can help to just extend that time so you have a little bit more wiggle room with your printing. You'll also need a plastic palette knife or just a plastic knife if you're using an eight ounce container of ink like this. If you're using a container, you'll need one of this to spoon out the ink to bring it out of the container. But if you're using a tube of ink like a two and-a-half ounce or five ounce tube, then you can just squeeze it out and you won't need these. You'll also need a tray for rolling out ink. You can either use an acrylic sheet or a bench hook. I personally love the 5 by 7 inch acrylic sheet. Looks like this. I recommend actually for this process getting two of these, you can make it work with one. It's just going to be less efficient because you're going to have to wash it down and wipe it down in-between each ink color. If you have to, then you can designate one for each color. It just makes the whole process a bit more seamless. I recommend getting two inking sheets. Again, these are the 5 by 7 acrylic sheets. On that note you'll also need one or two soft rubber brayers, the 4 inch size works great for those 4 by 6 inch blocks. Now again, just like the acrylic sheets for inking, I recommend using tube brayers for a more efficient process rather than just one where you'll have to wash it off, completely dry it between each color. If you have two, one can be designated for each color and it just makes the whole process a bit more simple. Two, ideally soft rubber brayers, but you can totally make it work with one. You'll also need a wooden spoon from your kitchen. A large metal spoon will work too, or you could use a baren for transferring your design once we've inked up to print. This is a bamboo baren that I got from Dick Blick Art Materials. But there are also ones that are plastic that work great as well. Alternatively, you could use a hard rubber brayer. I go over what that is and what that looks like in my Intro to block printmaking course. I'll be using that today to transfer my design so you can follow along, but that is another option. You'll also need paper for printing your final art prints. I really love the brand Scratch-Art Subi Block Printing Paper because it's really thin and it's just a nice large size. For the process we're doing today, sometimes that larger size of paper can be handy and then you can cut it down later. I really like show it to you. It's just this size. It's a 9 by 12 inch size white paper. I do recommend that. Alternatively, you could get a 5 by 7 inch smaller sized paper. For that size, I recommend this pad. Abstract more printmaking paper. It's really nice. It's a good weight. There's 40 sheets in this pad and so it's just a nice amount. You can print a lot from just one pad of paper. I do recommend this if you want a smaller size, I'll show you how to use both with the printing methods today. You'll also need some tracing paper to transfer your sketch to your block. You'll need a ruler as well as a sharpie. Lastly, you'll need a simple number 2 pencil for sketching out your designs and transferring them to your blocks. In the next lesson, we'll talk about your class project. I'll see you there. 3. Plan Your Class Project: For your class project, you will create a set of five colorful art prints inspired by food. Be sure to take a photo of your final prints once you're finished and upload it to the class project so we can see what you're working on and cheer you on. To upload your class project, you'll simply go to the Projects and Resources tab of this class. Then you will click "Create Project". That will bring you to this page where you can upload a cover image, add a project title, add a project description and this is the space where you will add your photo of your class project. You can do that by clicking on "Image" and then it will bring you to your files so you can select the correct file, that is a photo of your class project to upload to the description space. In addition, you can type some words to describe your process or anything you enjoyed about this class or this project into this description space. Then once you've uploaded everything, make sure you hit "Publish" so that we can see it in the class project section. Also, don't forget to post any questions that come up in the discussion section so I can help to guide you through this process. In the next lesson, we'll start gathering our inspiration from food to begin our print. See you there. 4. Gather Your Inspiration: Before we dig into designing our block prints, it's time to gather inspiration. Since the prompt for today's class is food, I recommend going directly to the source. Visit a local grocery store, farmers market, or a veggie garden to get inspired. Bring your sketchbook and camera with you, jot down any notes that inspire you, textures, colors, anything that you think could contribute to your final block print. As a side note, if you're sketching your food and loving that process, then you can dig deeper into this practice in my class, Daily Food Drawing Practice here on Skillshare. In addition to going directly to the source, you can also hop on Pinterest to find inspiration. You can search for any foods that you enjoy eating or cooking, as a starting point to get inspired. You can also search for prints of food to get inspiration of how you might turn these subjects into a final block print. When sourcing inspiration from the Internet, always take note of the artist or photographer who you are getting inspired by. Another wonderful source of inspiration is cookbooks. Either your cookbooks on your own shelf, or if you go to your library, you can find a whole array of cookbooks to be inspired by. Nowadays, a lot of cookbooks have illustrations in them. Flip through a few and find any ideas or recipes that start to give you new perspectives or outlooks of what you might design for your block. If you're still not sure what to create after going out and gathering inspiration, I don't want that to stop you from partaking in this class. You can download the free template that I've included in the resources document, which is a two-color print. You can download that and use that either as a starting point, or you can use it as an exact template to create your own blocks today. I do want to note that if you do choose to go this route and use this provided image, then you can't use it outside of the source of this class. You can't use it in your portfolio or to create products to sell. You can only use it within this class and for educational purposes. Thank you so much for respecting that. Go off and get your inspiration, get inspired, and come back here for the next lesson, where you'll learn the two techniques to create a two-color art print. I'll see you there. 5. Learn About the Two Techniques: In this class, I'm going to share two different techniques to create two-color art prints. In this lesson specifically, I'm going to give an overview of each technique, the pros, and cons of each method, as well as a map for you to move through this course. The first method I'll be sharing today is called multi-block printmaking. The second method I'll share is called reduction printmaking. Let's start by diving into an overview of multi-block printing. Multi-block printmaking is when you carve and use multiple blocks to create your final print. Each block that you carve is designated with a different color layer in the design. Some of the benefits of multi-block printing are that you can reuse the blocks that you carve in the future. This means that you can experiment with different color combinations and create additional prints even after you've printed your first set. Another benefit is that it is less risky than the reduction method, which I'll cover in a moment because you can more easily correct mistakes or start over if you need to with the multi-block method. Multi-block printmaking can also be a bit less confusing than reduction printing because it can be easier to see, visualize, and carve the different color layers. Some of the drawbacks of multi-block printmaking are that sometimes there can be slightly less accuracy with color alignment than reduction printmaking. It can also be less efficient than reduction printing because you are carving many blocks instead of just one. Also, if you are printing a series of prints, the multi-block printing method can be "less valuable" than reduction printmaking because you can reuse the blocks again and again with multi-block to create more prints. I do want to note that when I say less valuable, I'm not saying your effort, time, creativity, or artwork is less valuable. What I mean by this is that with reduction printmaking, you are creating a limited edition of prints which can make them more rare and special. But either method that you use, your work is valuable. Now let's move on to reduction printmaking. Reduction printing is when you use one single block to print your entire multi-color design. This means that you carve away one color layer at a time from your block, slowly reducing the block and design with each layer that you carve away. Some of the benefits of reduction printing are that you can have more accuracy with color alignment since everything is printed from the same block. It can be more efficient than the multi-block technique because you are only carving one block rather than multiple. The print created can carry more value than multi-block printing because once you've carved and printed your design, you can't print anymore from that block. Some of the drawbacks of reduction printing are that it can feel more risky or intimidating because once you carve your design, you can't undo it, as opposed to multi-block printmaking, where you have more wiggle room. Another drawback of reduction printmaking is that you can't reuse the block like you can with the multi-block technique. Lastly, reduction printmaking can feel a bit confusing with how to separate and carve the different color layers, but I'm breaking it all down step-by-step in this class so it feels more approachable for you. Even though I'm covering two different methods for two-color printing in this class, you can approach it in a choose your own adventure style. If you'd like to learn how to do both methods, you can take this whole class. If you'd like to learn just one of the methods, then you can just take the lessons related to that technique. I've included two class maps in the resources document so that if you want to only learn multi-block printing, you can follow the steps outlined in that map, map A, and if you only want to learn reduction printmaking, then you can follow the steps outlined in that map, map B. In the next lesson, we'll kick off the printing process by creating our sketches. I'll see you there. 6. Create Your Sketches: For this lesson, you'll need one of your four-by-six-inch linoleum blocks, a number 2 pencil, and a few sheets of 8.5 by 11 inch blink printer paper. For this step of the process, gather everything that you jotted down in your inspiration lesson. Start to look for any common themes that show up. Maybe common foods that you took photos of, or common textures that you found on Pinterest. Common color themes. Anything that keeps showing up over and over from all of your inspiration, take note of that, and use that as a starting point for your sketches. After examining this common thread and all of your inspiration, pick one food that you're going to move forward with as the subject of your final art print. To start sketching your design, trace the perimeter of your four-by-six-inch block on your blank sheet of printer paper about three times, and these three parameters will be the frameworks to start sketching your ideas and designs within. As I mentioned in my intro to block printing class, I recommend choosing one food and drawing it three different ways within these perimeters, rather than drawing three totally different foods. The reason for this is that you can start to make new creative connections and find new design ideas by just pushing into and leaning into one main subject as the inspiration rather than scattering across many. That's why I recommend that, it can lead to a lot of cool creative connections that maybe weren't apparent at first glance. For more tips and a walk-through of creating these sketches, you can visit my Intro to Block Printmaking class. Grab your number 2 pencil and let's get started with our sketching. When sketching design options for a two color prints, you want to keep in mind your end results. Thinking about what colors you might want to use and how your inspiration or your subjects can be interpreted in just two colors. For example, I'm going to be using the template that I've provided in this class of this juicy grapefruit. If I'm using grapefruit as inspiration and I'm using a photograph, then I'm thinking about, okay, I maybe want to use some pinks or reds or oranges to really convey the beauty and pop of this fruit. When you're thinking about that, just as you sketch, you don't have to detail everything right off the bat, but just keep it in mind that you are going to be printing into colors and how to include that information. One simple way to think about it is if you're drawing food that has a base color and then some details, then your base color can be one color and the details can be another color. What's useful about that, you must remember, that if you're doing a base color with details on top, we always print light to dark. Just like in this example, you want your base color to be lighter than your top details color. Just keep that in mind. I'm going to start by just drawing what I see in this first sketch and then I'll branch out from there. You can sketch alongside me with your own food. Again, so as I'm sketching this, I'm thinking, okay, what if this was a lemon. That base circle, I would be doing in yellow, then the top details, I would be doing in black likely. But you could also think about dark blue on light blue, red on a lighter pink. There are so many dark-light combos that you could really play with with food. This is based on what I see here. Now, I'm going to play off of that and just do a slice. I'm keeping the illustrations pretty simple. I'm not going into immense detail. Personally, I like a pretty flat minimal style. I think that works really well with block printmaking. I love that. That would be super fine. Then maybe just playing with an abstract. Well, I think instead of total abstraction, I'll still relate back to this. I'll just do one of the pieces instead of the whole slice. That'll look like a watermelon actually. Something like that. I have just simplified as I've gone from whole, half, to this wedge, to just one slice. Those are three designs that I could choose from. I like all of them. I think each of them would make a really good two-color print. What I am going to do is I'm going to use this template as an example today. But I could just as easily use this sketch. But anything that you've sketched in your space will apply to what I'm about to show you with the template, and then if you're using the template, of course it applies directly as well. A pro tip is that you could also draw these initial sketches digitally. In an app like Adobe Fresco or Procreate, you could create a canvas size that is the same size as your block, so four by six inches, and then draw within that your design idea. This can be really useful with this type of printmaking that we're doing today with two colors because you can make a canvas and then have each layer of your drawing be a different color. That'll help once we get to the transfer stage and start to think about our design in the print. You'll see this as we move forward. But this is a really great way to sketch. Or if you sketch by pencil first, then turn it into a digital drawing, that can help with the process as well. I have this grapefruit illustration that is the template for this class, and I drew this in Adobe Fresco, and now I've opened it in Adobe Illustrator, but you could also open it in something like Adobe Photoshop. But in this, what you can see is when I go to layers over here, because I drew each color on a separate layer in Adobe Fresco, when they come into Adobe Illustrator, they're still on separate layers. This is the coolest part. I can hide the orange layer, I can hide the pink layer. But essentially, what I could do is I could hide the top pink layer and just print this orange, and then I could hide the orange layer and just print off the pink. Then that way I would have the two colors on separate layers that I could use to create my map for my sketch and to use that to transfer to my block, and I'm going to walk through this in more detail, but I just wanted to give you an overview of how you would print that off from Adobe Illustrator. The canvas size, I did create as a four by six inch in Adobe Fresco, so you would want to make sure that that remains the same when you're printing it on a larger sheet of paper to make sure that perimeter is correct for your block. Let's say I was just going to print this pink layer, I could go to Print, and what shows up as that it's going to print on 8.5 by 11, four by six inches. I would do a test print to make sure everything measured out correctly and then I could print the other layer as well. I've included the template both as a full colorful drawing and as two separate layers that you can print off as well. If you want to start visualizing and playing with color in that way, as we move forward into the transfer and carving steps, then feel free to print those off to help you out. Again, you can find that in the resources document. Now that we have our sketches on paper or digitally, it's time to move into the next lesson where we'll make our map, that will really help us once we get to carving our blocks. I'll see you there. 7. Multi-Block: Make Your Map: In this lesson, we're focusing on the multi-block technique in making your map. You'll need two 4 by 6 inch linoleum blocks, your sketch or the provided template, as well as tracing paper and a number 2 pencil. For this step, pick one of your sketches that you want to turn into your final art print. Using that chosen sketch, let's start to think about how we want to see that in color in our final art print. Remember that we're using two colors today, so think in terms of two colors. As we look at your sketch, think about which areas you want to be one color, let's say yellow, and which area you want to be another color, let's say orange. Remember what I mentioned in the materials section to pick one lighter color and one darker color. As you're looking at your sketch, start to think about those things. Then we can start to add that as information into our sketch that will really help us with the carving and then later the printing process. This is going to look a little bit different than what I recommend in my intro to block printmaking class. Just because when it comes to two-color printing, you need to be pretty precise to make sure everything aligns completely. Rather than just a direct transfer from sketch, I actually recommend using some tracing paper. I just have this Strathmore tracing paper. It's a larger 9 by 12 size and sheets. What I'm going to do here is just tear out one sheet. I'll show you the next steps here. Because I have two colors, I know that I'm going to need to trace my design twice, one for each color layer. This will make sense as I show you. I'm just going to put this tracing paper over my design, over the template. Then I'm going to grab my block. I am just going to place this into the top left corner of the design, my block that I'm using. Because you can see it just slightly overhangs and that's typical with blocks, especially speeding carve is there can be some slight variation. I'm just going to line this up because I'm going to want to transfer it to this block. I'm going to put number 1 for my first block. Just have that as a starting point. Then I have my other block. Because again, this is the multiple block printing methods that we're using multiple blocks. For this block, I am just going to trace this. So then I'm going to label this one number 2. Then I'll just do the same here. This was the first block I traced and this is getting really minute, but it's just because there are slight variations, very slight from block to block, but I want to be mindful of that. I've aligned each of those just so I know. While I'm at it, I'm just going to mark that number 1 is going to be the lighter color because again, we're going to print from light to dark. I'm going to write orange and number 2 is going to be that red. I have that and I'll mark the same information on my block here. I'm going to set these aside for a moment. I'm just going to cut straight down the middle here with my scissors. That just gives me a little less paper to deal with as we move forward. Now, if you have done a whole sketch like we have been doing here in these papers, then what you can do is start to designate though different sections of your drawing. What I mean by this is for the orange layer, I'm only going to trace the sections that are going to be orange in my design. Now, because you can see there's this line just outside of the line on the template. That's because this block is just slightly bigger, just because of manufacturing. I always tried to align with this top left corner. Now, I'm just going to trace what I see in my design that's orange, which is just this really basic circle. The reason I recommend tracing paper for this version of two-color printing is again, just to get really exact match-up of colors. I'm going to set that layer off to the side. Now I'll grab my red layer line to the top left corner. Now I'm just going to trace over everything in my design that shows up as red. This can be really useful rather than just a pencil sketch, either coming back in with marker or colored pencil so you can start to visualize your colors before tracing or drawing digitally is really helpful to just to see those colors really vibrantly and then printing that off. There's another benefit to drawing your design digitally that'll show you in a moment. That's another option if you want to work in a very clear layered way. I'm just tracing what shows up as red. I'm just filling in these red spaces with pencil just so there's no confusion down the road when I start carving. What you can see on this design is there's a pretty thin red line around the edge here. That just looks like this kind of thin line on my sketch, but I want to make that even more pronounced. It continues around here. I am going to make sure those lines are in there. That's the benefit of either taping down your tracing paper or holding it down is that you can really check by just flipping one edge back to compare and make sure you're getting your design correctly traced before you move it. This is thicker then just a thin line, so I want to make that clear. Okay, so that looks really good. This is ready and I'm just going to bring my orange layer back in just so I can make a note to myself, this is like a really rough I'm not filling this in every inch, just a really rough fill in here. Then I'll write in the background white carve. I will do the same thing in this white card. That is if you're using a sketch where everything is placed together in one cohesive image. Now what I want to show you is one benefit of drawing digitally is that you can place each color into its own layer on your iPad or in Adobe Fresco. Then you can print those layers off individually. What this looks like is the red layer here and the orange layer. That's really helpful because that can eliminate some of the guesswork or trying to think into colors from one cohesive sketch. Then you can just trace one of each of these one at a time. For example, I would just place my tracing paper over the orange layer, trace what I see. Then place my tracing paper over the red layer and trace what I see. That can just really help visually to imagine those different layers rather than trying to piece it apart from one whole sketch. I did just want to show you how to do it with the whole sketch because some of you might not work digitally, but that is an option. Something I love about drawing digitally is just that ability to separate and help my brain when I'm in the sketching stage. Now that we have all this wonderful information included in our sketch, in the next lesson, we'll transfer the sketch to our blocks before we begin carving. I'll see you there. 8. Multi-Block: Transfer Your Designs: For this lesson, you'll your two traced layers that you created from your sketch. Your two 4'' by 6'' linoleum blocks and a number 2 pencil. I'm going to grab my first block, which is number 1, orange. That's on the back. I'm going to set this on the table and line this up with the drawing facing down. What's great about sketching on, or drawing your sketch on tracing paper is that when you trace it, you're tracing the design face up in this orientation. When you flip it, it'll be backwards on your block, which means that it will transfer in the correct orientation once you print. That is similar to the method that I teach in intro to block printmaking. I like that, especially if you're using words that it just won't be backwards once you print. Here I am lining up the top left corner, but it looks like the right, but I'm thinking in reverse. So I'm lining up that corner, and then I'm just going to take my pencil like this. It doesn't take a lot to transfer it. I'll just check. That's clear and good. I'm going to set that to the side, and I'll set this off of my desk for now. Then I have my number 2 block, which is the red layer, and my number 2 tracing paper, which is the red layer. I'm going to do the same thing here and line that up in this corner. Make sure all the edges are aligned. I'm just doing the same thing here, transferring this baby, and I'll check it. Looks great. Now I can see that these look pretty good. I think they'll align nicely. You could go back over these in Sharpie if you want. It's not necessary. I think these are pretty clear for me to start carving, so I'm just going to leave it as is. If you want more contrast and clarity, feel free to go over it in Sharpie. This is how you transfer and of course, if you had traced just these two layers, one at a time, you would end up with the same tracing papers. You would end up with this as red and the other one as the orange. You'd end up in the same place and the transfer would become the same as what we just did. This is just one other simple way to get there. Okay, now that we have transferred our design to our blocks, in the next lesson, we will carve our designs for this multiple block technique. I'll see you there. 9. Multi-Block: Carve Your Blocks: For this lesson of carving with the multiple block technique, you're going to need your linoleum cutter handle, your blades, and your two, four by six inch blocks where you've transferred your design. Now that we have our sketches transferred to our blocks, it's time to start carving. I always like to work no matter what stage in order of light to dark, because that is the order I'm going to print in. I just like to stay in that mentality as much as I can. I'm going to start by carving my orange block. Again, remember we've labeled these on the back, so orange and red. One more note I'm going to make for myself that I recommend is just doing an arrow. Just indicate the orientation. I remember layer when I'm printing. Now I'm going to start by carving my orange layer, which is just carving everything around this circle. Then I'll carve my red layer, which is carving everything around this circle, plus these internal white spaces that I've not filled in. I think as I'm looking at these, I want it to be not totally crisp and clean behind, I want some texture marks. I'm going to be pretty fluid with my carving in the background. I'm going to carve in one direction in the background instead of crisscrossed so that it's just all going the same way. I'll show you what that looks like and you can just watch me carve and carve alongside me. I'll start with this orange block. I'm going to start with my one blade to just outline those main shape. Then I'll come back in with a larger blade after that. To get a smoother circle, I have this map just so that I can collect the shavings. But for a circle, I'm going to actually move my block a bit more. Now that I have that mane contour, I'm going to pop out that one blade and pop in the five. That's the way to use. I like this for background. As I mentioned, I'm just going to go one direction and not be totally perfect about it. But I am going to smooth out, there are some areas of this circle contour that got a little edgy. I'm going to smooth those out a little bit too. I'm debating whether I want these edge pieces to stay. Because I'm going for textured background, I think I will keep those there. But I'm just going to carve up to them so that they're not drooping too far in to the print. I have that on the top and the bottom and we'll just see how that looks like. I can always carve it away later if I don't like it. That looks pretty good. I'm just looking at the edge of the circle. Looks pretty good. I'm going to just knock out any remainders out of there and set this off to the side, so now in my red block. I'm going to come back in with my one blade and just carve around all of the contour lines. Then I will come back in with my five-blade and a few of the smaller blades to do this detail work. For these triangles, I'm just carving on either side to reach the point, and then I come back in and do the base. Sometimes I find that gets just a little bit cleaner of a shape. I have my contours around my red spaces and I'm going to switch my blade, scoop these off to the side. I'm going to come back here just to collect the pink stuff, I don't really need it because this doesn't slip too much. But I'm going to do my two blades for these inner triangle spaces. Now I'm going to come in with this blade and just follow those contours to start carving out those spaces that will not be red. Let's think about this till just now, which sometimes happens with creating. It would've been cool to leave some intentional carving marks within these little triangles. Think about like say, feel small in that whitespace. But that could have been fun just to add to the juiciness of the fruit. Maybe in the future, I'll experiment with that in a different block. With process is sometimes an idea comes to you, and you've already been working in another direction and that's fine, and you can just incorporate that the next time. That's looking good. I'm just looking at those inside spaces, it looks good. I'm going to move into the background now. I'm going to switch to my size blade, and I'm going to do the same thing as I did on the last where I leave some of those texture lines from carving. I'm going to carve away everything outside of here, just making those texture marks as well, like I did with the orange block. I'm going to leave those top edges just like I did in that last one. Those are going to overlap in different ways, which I think could be visually interesting. I'm excited to see what this looks like. Just padding out the excess linoleum so it doesn't interact with ink. There is the red layer, and that'll lay on top of the orange layer. In the next lesson, I'm going to share some different methods to make sure your colors align with your different blocks once we start printing. I'll see you there. 10. Learn Simple Registration Methods: When we're printing multiple colors in a block print, it's really important that we make sure everything is in alignment so that it becomes one cohesive image. Again, there are always going to be perhaps some imperfections in this art form, which is part of its beauty, but for the most part we want to try to align the colors in the different blocks together to be really cohesive. In printmaking, this alignment is called registration. There are many different methods to create registration, some more complex than others. In this class, I'm going to show you some simple methods using materials that you probably already have for this class rather than having to build something totally new. Ideally we can just use the paper that we already have to create some registration marks and guidelines to help us as we begin to print. I'll show you that in the demo. In one of the registration methods I'll show you, I'm going to be working with that 9 by 12 inch scratch-art paper that I introduced in the materials section. In another registration method, I'm going to be using the 5 by 7 inch Strathmore printmaking paper so that whichever of those you're using, if either, you can follow along to match up with this process. Another term that you'll hear me use throughout this lesson and in the inking and printing lesson is the term edition. What this means in printmaking is essentially the number of art prints that you create from a single design or a single block. In today's class, the class project is to create a series of five art prints inspired by food. In printmaking, that would be called an edition of five prints. When I say edition, that's what I'm talking about, it's just the number of prints you're creating from a single design. Just before we get everything all inked up and inky, I want to show you a few methods that you could use for registering or aligning your paper to make sure it gets into alignment with these different colors. I'll start with one of my favorites, which is using the 9 by 12 inch paper, which is what I'm going to use for my edition today. I have just put this 9 by 12 sheet down on my desk, and I'm going to tape this down all around the edges, and just enough to secure it. I actually like to keep these corners open and visible, and you'll see why in a minute. That's secure. You can't see this bottom tape, but it's just right here, so same thing. Then what I'm going to do here is actually take my block and center it. I could use a ruler and center it exactly. Right now, I am just going to eyeball this. I am putting it in the center. Then I'm just going to trace that block onto my paper. This is just creating a template and outline for where my block will rest when I start printing. I have that, and then I'm just going to place the other one in there just to see how it looks, and it looks good. Those are ready to go. Now, what this registration method looks like is that I will put the light block down first and then I'll take my 9 by 12 paper once this is inked. I could tape it down, but to prevent ripping I am just going to place it edge-to-edge, corner-to-corner up there. Then make sure it's straight and let go. Then I'll dab the ink just a little bit and then fully transfer it. That's just lining up my 9 by 12 paper with this 9 by 12 template, and then this is right in the middle marked by that line. That's one method. One of the benefits of using this larger size paper for this registration method is that you have a bit more wiggle room to play around with. I like including a lot of extra margin when I'm printing typically so that if I love all of that whitespace I can keep it, but I can also always cut it down if some ink gets on the edges from my fingerprints or if something just feels a little bit too much of margin, I can always just cut it down. There's a bit more control at the end of the prints, where I can decide how much margin I want to keep. Just having that extra space on the paper and that wiggle room just allows for a little bit more fluidity when it comes to printing and registering the block. Another method if you want a little more security of your block staying in place would be the same thing where you would tape this paper down, but rather than drawing this rectangle, you would actually cut it out with an exacto knife to create a little jig. Let me show you that. For this one, I would just place my block in the middle of the paper or I could measure it to be totally exact. For this, I am just eyeballing that, and then I would mark it again. Then I would take my ruler and place it on all of these edges and start to cut this inside rectangle out. Here's 1, right on that line, 2, and 3, and 4. Then you have this jig for your block to fit right inside. This is just an old sketchbook by the way that I used for carving on, just the back of that. But once you have that jig cut, you could tape it down just like we did with this other sheet. Then you could set your block within that jig and then do the same draping method. One of the benefits of this registration method is that you created a really simple jig, a little puzzle piece space, for your block to set into so that you're really sure it's aligning each time. That can be really helpful because it secures the block just a little bit and can give you a bit more peace of mind when you're aligning things up. There are a couple methods for the smaller paper if you're using this 5 by 7 Strathmore sheet. Just first and foremost, because it's so close in size to this block, I don't really recommend this draping method just because there's not as much margin. It's a little tense and taut, so it's just harder to align it and feels a little less forgiving than the larger sheet. I wouldn't recommend that. If you are using the smaller sheet, what you could do is actually, just like we did with the block, let me put down a new one so I don't get confused here, you could mark your paper in the center of this larger paper. Again, I'm just eyeballing that. You could measure it directly to center. Mark the paper size and then within that, mark your block. Then what I do when I do that is just write in the center "block" just so I remember. Then what you would do is ink up your block, line it up in here to that corner. Then rather than holding and draping, because there's hardly any margin, what you can do is just bird's eye view. This is not like totally science exact registration, but it can work. What you can do here is bird's eye view it and align up that top line of your paper with that top line of the outline, and then just set it down on top of your block, and transfer with your barren. Then you would do the same thing with the second layer. That's one option. Another way is to actually forgo the barren method completely if you want to do more of a stamp. For this, if I, for example, knew that I was going to do this edition of five, then what I would do before I got any ink anywhere would be take my dry block, center it on my paper, and I would just mark very lightly the corners, all four because I can erase this later. I would do that on all of the number of however many I was printing. If I was doing an edition of five, for example, I would do all five sheets of paper making these guidelines before I start printing or getting anything inky. Then once I have my edition of however many it was ready to go, then once I've inked up, if I want to do this stamp method, then I would just take my block and align it in that corner and in the bottom left corner. Then just lay it down and then just stamp with my hands like this. Then I would do the next layer on top of that, aligning with the same guidelines. That's another method. Instead of doing face up, you could do face down. I don't always do that with registration, but it's an option that you can experiment with especially with the smaller paper. I hope that gives you some good options to work with in terms of registering your print. I'm not going to ink everything with each of those methods, I just wanted to show you how you would set all of those up. Now, I just do want to note that when we're printing by hand with these simpler registration methods, it can end up in some imperfection. Sometimes the colors don't totally align, sometimes it's a little bit different than what we expected. But again, with printmaking, sometimes that imperfection adds to the beauty. Now, I will say if you go down the road and you want to make a more complex registration system, that's amazing, and that can really make it more certain that everything is going to line up as exact as possible. The reason I chose the simpler methods for this class is I want you to be able to access them with materials you have on hand already rather than having to go build something. But that is an option, is to make that for even more accuracy. Your next step is to pick a registration method from the ones I've shown you depending on the paper that you're using and your preference. I'll be using the draping method with the larger sheet of 9 by 12 inch paper, and that's the method I showed you at the very beginning of this lesson. In the next lesson, we're going to ink and print our designs using the multiple block technique. I'll see you there. 11. Multi-Block: Ink & Print Your Blocks: Let's get inking and printing. For this lesson, you'll need your two carved blocks that we just created in the last lesson. You'll need your two chosen colors of ink. If you're using eight ounce jars of ink, then you'll also need a palette knife or a plastic knife for getting that ink out onto your inking tray. You'll need two acrylic sheets. You could use one. This is what I mentioned in the materials section. You could use one acrylic sheet for inking out, but it'll just be a bit less simple than just having two, where you can designate one sheet for each color. I do recommend having two of those acrylic sheets, five by seven inch for inking out. You'll also need one or two brayers. Again, I recommend two soft brayers so that you can designate one per color. You'll also need your chosen art papers. Whatever you're choosing for your final art prints, be sure to have that on hand. You'll also need a baren, a wooden spoon, or a hard four-inch brayer for transferring your design to your paper. Lastly, you'll need a number 2 pencil to create your registration marks. Now that we have carved our blocks, it's time to start inking and printing. Just a few notes before we get started that I want to share is that I've cleared my table of all the pink scraps from my block just to make sure that doesn't interfere with the printing process at all. That's all gone. Then I've taped down just a large sheet of drawing paper to my desk just to protect it from getting inky. You could also use a large sheet of newsprints or those are already the two things I recommend, just a large sheet of paper or a large sheet of newsprint. Then I always like to have my drawing off to the side. If I have the two color layers that can help too. I'm going to set that to the side. Just a reminder that I'm going to be using the first registration method that I showed you in the last lesson, which is the draping method where I've outlined my block with pencil on paper and then I'll simply drape my paper to print over the top of that block. I'm going to start by making sure I have all five sheets ready to go so that they're ready for printing. I have that additional five ready to be printed. I'm just going to move pretty much everything I'm not using off of my desk out of the way. Then what I'm going to do is rather than printing in this or inking up in this, I'm going to ink up over here in my little inking station. The reason for that is I don't want to get this margin messy when I'm printing just to prevent any excess ink getting anywhere. Now, what I've set up here are my two colors, so I have orange and red. Again, I'm working from light to dark, so I put light on the left and I have a designated station for that. Dark on the right, the red designated station for that. This is a hard rare that I'll be using to transfer my print, but you could also use a baren wooden spoon or just transfer with your hands. For this, I'm going to start by doling out some of the light ink and then printing all of my light colors and the addition first. I'll print this five times for my addition of five, let them dry, and then I'll come back with the darker color, print five of this on top of those dried prints, and that'll be the final print. Very exciting. I'm going to move this over here. This is why I recommend if you can to have two brayers, two knives, and two palettes because then you can just work pretty efficiently instead of having to wash everything, make sure it's totally dry for each ink, you just have a station for each ink. That's really helpful. I'm going to start here by doling out some of this orange ink for this light layer, and I'm just going to give it a good stir. Put it on my palette. I'll just leave that to the side. Then I'm going to just start inking up my brayer. Starting to sound good. Now I'm going to move this into view here. I'll just ink this orange layer again. See, this is why we write this note because this was upside down. It's just a circle. I'm going to make sure the top is top when I ink up. Have that note for myself? It is the orange layer. Top is facing up. I'm just going to ink it up. I want to get these background marks that I left intentionally. Get some more ink on there. Sounding good. I'm going to set my brayer on its spine. Now I'm going to move this to my template here. That's why top is already top because it's been easy to just transfer it. Excuse my head if it comes into frame. I'm just going to make sure this is aligned to that top-left corner, and then I have a bit of ink on my hand, so I'm going to just wipe that off on my apron. It's another reason it's nice to have a lot of margin on your paper is if you get ink on those margins, you can always cut that down. Now I'm going to align this up again part in my head in the frame, just trying to make sure from above everything's correct and looks good. I want to hold that and then just let it drop down. Then I'll just secure it with my hand a little bit. I'm taking my hard brayer and holding certain areas with my fingers while I roll the rest, being sure to get these edges. Now just rolling that down. I'm going to peel it back. Looks good. Love these marks in the background. That's the first layer. I'm going to let this dry and I'm going to do the other four exact same way, and then we'll let this layer dry before moving to our darker color. This was the fifth of my addition of five. I've been laying them out in order and I'll show you why that is when we sign them. But I am going to set this to the side, let all of these layers dry completely, and then we'll move into inking the next color. You could ink while still wet, it'll just blend the colors more so you can experiment that if you want. I like to let it dry just for this demo so that we can see each of the colors distinctly one on top of the other. That will be the next step. Now my orange layer is totally dry. This is one nice thing about water-based inks, is that they dry pretty quickly and efficiently. Now I'm going to move my orange block aside so that I can start printing my red layer to layer on top. I'm going to just start by getting some ink out. Always like to give it a good stir. Just charging up my brayer. I'm doing good. I'm going to scoot this up just so you can see here. Checking, so that was the wrong orientation. Checking that top is top as I ink this up. I'm inking the whole thing, so I want to get these intentional carving marks as texture. Now, top is top. I'm going to lay this down and I'm going to go in order. It's not a huge deal, but I like to try to stay in order of what I printed, and now I'm going to take the first orange that I had, and I'm just going to align that paper up just like I did with each one last time. I'm just lining that up. I'm going to squeeze into the frame here just to get that totally aligned. Now let it drop down, and this is how is the moment of truth. Always a little nerve-wracking to see how it turns out that you're hoping for the best alignment. With multiple block technique, it can be sometimes tricky to get that exact registration. But sometimes it's nice to keep that in mind when you design because then you can give a little wiggle room with it, maybe not being totally lined up. Always the big reveal. Let's see how it looks. On my gosh, I'm really happy with that. I actually love it. I mean, there's a lot of texture happening and I think that's really fun. In my own studio practice, I'd probably come back in and carve a lot of that away, like maybe some of this orange down here, and then reprint these. But for this class, I think that's just a beautiful example that you can include some fine textures in the background just by carving. Now another note here that's really nice about multiple block printing technique is that you can change your colors at some point because you can reuse these blocks over and over. I like that the orange and the red, they're close together in color, and so it's like a nice variation happening. But if I wanted something that was higher or contrast, I could do black as these details and make that really stand out as thick contrast. You can come back into your multiple blocks and try different color combinations of light and dark with other colors. That's one benefit. I'm just going to print the red on the other four and then I will let everything dry and meet you for the next step. Just a quick note, this was my fifth one. Something that you can do on your first layer if it's something that's a bit harder to tell what side is what, I just wrote at the very top of my sheet, really lightly top so that I could align that as well with my next layer. That's another option for you if you want that reminder because I know that I'm going to cut this down. That will be cut off or I could also just erase it. That's another option. That's my fifth one of the series, and I'm going to let all of these dry and then I will return to show you how to cut them down if you want to create a smaller emergent and then how to sign. See you soon. 12. Cut and Sign Your Prints: For this lesson, you'll need your final edition of art prints, a ruler, your number 2 pencil, and an X-Acto knife or scissors. Now, that my prints are dry, both layers are dry, I'm going to move into cutting down these larger margins to a smaller size. Because I'm using 9 by 12 inch paper, I'm going to cut down to, I think an 8 by 10 inch size, and that will still give nice margin around my 4 by 6 inch print. If you have a paper cutter, great, this will be really efficient for you. I currently do not, so I'm going to be using a ruler, and then an X-Acto. I'm going to get everything cut down in this first one, and then I'll just do it with the rest of my edition as well. To get that going, I'm just going to move my nine inch side in 1/2 inch on either side to make that eight. Do the same up here, and then I'll come in and do that with the 12-inch side as well. But I'll come in at one inch, and one inch. Now, I'm just going to connect these lines, these little marks that I've made here, and then I'll cut those down at the X-Acto against my ruler. Now, I have those lines to cut on, so I'm just going to line up my ruler, and then I'll take my X-Acto and my trusty sketchpad, and I will just cut along these lines against my ruler. Now, I have these margins, and I'm going to do the same thing to all other four. I've cut all of these down, and so now all the margins are the same, and it this 8 by 10 size, so now it is time to sign. I've kept them in the order that I printed. Ideally, when you're signing your work, you know what order it was because what you'll do is indicate what number and the edition that print is. I always title on the bottom left, so I'm going to write grapefruit, and then I'll write one of five in the middle to indicate it's a edition of five, and then I sign my name with the date. Then I'll just go through and do the same title but shift that middle mark. Two of five, my name, and the date. I just do the year, so '21. Three of five, name, and date. There we have it, cut down and signed. Now this is my edition of five of the grapefruit print using the multiple block technique. I hope you really enjoyed this multiple block technique for creating your multicolor art prints. The benefit of this technique is that you get to use your blocks over, and over again, which is not the case with the next technique that I'm going to show you, and I'll do that in the next lesson where I'll introduce you to what's called reduction printmaking. I'll see you there. 13. Reduction: Make Your Map: For this lesson, you'll need your initial sketch, a four by six-inch linoleum block, tracing paper, and a Number two pencil. For the reduction method, things are going to look just a little bit different, but we're going to transfer in the same way. For this portion, instead of drawing different colored layers on different blocks, we're going to draw the entire design on the block. What I'm going to start by doing to do this is just trace the perimeter of my book just like we did earlier. Just going to trace that perimeter onto my tracing paper and I'll cut that down with some scissors and I'll save this scrap for later. Now, I have this, and I'm going to cut this little edge off just to get it a little smaller. I'm working from this. But let's say you're working from your pencil sketch. It would still just be the entirety of your sketch rather than dividing into color layers. For this, I am going to just place this over my colored sketch. I'm going to line it up corners to corners. Now, I'm just going to draw everything in my sketch. You could tape down your tracing paper to the top of your paper if you'd like. I'm just going to do it by holding with one hand. I'm filling in these areas that are red just to remind myself. I might also even do this. In the center, I filled it in. You could do it that way, or you can write the letter name or just the first letter of its name. I'm writing R in all of these spaces that are going to be red. Then basically, remembering that the filled-in areas are red. Whatever works best for you, either filling in or you can label it with the first letter of its name. Outlines here. Correct. Then, I'm going to just check. Looks like I got everything. Thicken up this line just a little bit. Now, I'm ready to transfer this to my block. In the next lesson, I'll show you how to transfer your design for the reduction method. I'll see you there. 14. Reduction: Transfer Your Design: For this lesson, you'll need your tracing paper map of your sketch that we created in the last lesson, your four-by-six-inch linoleum block and Number 2 pencil, and a Sharpie. I'm just wiping my block free of debris. The last two I use for Speedy-Carve, this is Eco Karve so it's a darker pink. It prints just a little bit differently and it's a thicker material, so it's just a little tougher to carve, but it is made from 100 percent recycled material which I love. Now I'm lining up this corner up here with my block. Just making sure everything looks aligned. Then I'm just going to take my pencil like last time and just transfer that drawing. See how that looks? Really good. Speedy-Carve transfers of a sketch to Speedy-Carver really clear. Sometimes it takes a little more with Eco Karve to get that really on there. But that looks good. All of my Rs are backwards, which is good because it means my print is going to print in the orientation that I want. It doesn't totally matter with this design, but if I had words in here, that would really matter. Let the fun begin with this method. What's happening here, just as a preface, is that we're going to carve one color layer at a time. Just a few things about reduction printing. One, one great thing about it is I feel like you can actually get more accurate registration because you're using the exact same block, so you have the exact same sizing and carving, so that's a great thing about it. The tricky thing about it is once you carve an ink, you're done because we're going to slowly reduce, hence the name, the reduction. We're going to slowly peel away, carve away these layers, so one by one because we have two colors. First, we're going to carve away everything that's white, so it can help if you have large spaces to just write that in. Then we will print the full design. Once that background white is carved away, we'll print the full design in the light color. What I highly, highly recommend is that you actually do go back over your design with Sharpie because we're going to have to wipe everything down in between each color to keep carving and then print. I'm just going to come back over everything here and take a moment to outline and Sharpie, so I have the reference point once we wash everything. This wasn't necessary for multi block, but I do recommend it for this. Now this is outlined and Sharpie, so I feel good to start carving. In the next lesson, we'll carve the white layer in our design on our block. See you there. 15. Reduction: Carve Your Light Layer: For this lesson, you'll need your four by six inch block with your transferred design, your carving tool and blades, and your sketch or the template as reference. First, just start by carving away anything that's going to be white. I'll start by just doing the contour of my outer circle with my one blade. Then I will hop in with my five to get that background out of there. Here we go. Just like the last one, I think I'm going to leave some texture of the carbon marks in the background, maybe not quite as much, but some. I'm putting my five blade in to start carving away these larger areas. For this one, I am going to comeback in and carve this top section off, so I'm going to come parallel to that, just trim that right off. I have the area that is going to be white, that background carved away. I highly recommend that you make sure all of these pieces are just gone off your desk, there's no scrap because we're moving straight into inking and then we'll be carving and then inking getting again. So just make sure your station is all clean. I'm going to clear this off and get set up with my registration method using the nine by 12 paper and that pencil line. I'm going to get that and we will get set up for inking. All right, see you soon. In the next lesson, we'll ink and print our light color layer. See you there. 16. Reduction: Ink & Print Your Light Layer: For this lesson, you'll need your carved block, your light ink color, a soft rubber brayer, a baren, a wooden spoon, or a hard rubber brayer to transfer your print, a palette knife or a plastic knife, an acrylic sheet for inking, and blank sheets of paper for printing. Now we've carved out everything from our block that is going to be white. We're going to print the entire design. Nothing else is carved from here in the lightest color of our design. For me, that's the orange, because my darker color is red. We're going to print the whole thing, so it's going to end up being this main circle in orange. I just have my orange ink set up right here right now because I don't want to get everything in the way with the red ink as well since I'm going to be carving more. I have that setup. I have my registration methods set-up for my last technique. My paper is just off to my right for printing, so it's ready to go. I am going to start with that orange layer. I'm just going to start by getting some orange out onto my palette, always give it a good stir, and then I'll just ink up my brayer here. One tip that a printmaking teacher taught me was to never leave your palette knife in your container of ink, which I'd never follow that advice because it's so convenient, but the reason being that you could knock this and fling ink all over your prints. It's really good advice. I do recommend it, even though I don't always follow it You want to keep that in mind. You can just set your palette knife onto your lid, on the inside of your lid, or something instead. One thing that I forgot to do here, that I'm going to do before we print everything, is just label top so we can remember once we carve the next layer. We did that in the last technique. Let's do it again here. I just put top up there, so I know how to line that up. Now I'm going to line that up, make sure my top is top. It is. Line that up in the corner, so I'm going to get in the frame here. Ink on my hands, so you can always wipe that. It's nice to have a rag or apron on you to wipe that off. Now I'm getting my first sheet of that 9 by 12, and I'm just going to come into the frame to line it up on the top. Here we go. One of five, so now I'm going to use my hard brayer to transfer that. If you're using a hard brayer like this to transfer, if you just go in one direction, I found it can keep it from turning and twisting a little bit more. Also just a note, if you're using Eco Karve, sometimes you need a bit more pressure to transfer that ink than with Speedy-Carve. Let me check it. Looks great. That's the first one of five, so I'm just going to do the rest of those four. Same thing. I'm always looking mostly at that top-left corner, as I've mentioned, to wind up the block, and then just making sure it's in alignment on the edges as well. There we go. That's the fifth. Now I'm going to let all of these base layers dry, and let them dry completely while I carve out for the next layer. What I mean by this, is I'm just going to set all of these aside and let them dry. Before I start carving, I'm going to wash this block off completely, dry it completely, and then I'll bring it back here to start carving out everything that we just printed, that we want to stay orange. What that means is whatever is left after we carve is just going to be the red layer. This is where these come in handy again, because we can really visualize what that looks like. Basically, we're going to carve out everything except this. That's what's in Sharpie on here. I'll show you this in more detail once we start carving. But this is why it's called reduction; is we're using the same block and we're carving away everything that was orange. It's a little risky and scary because you don't get what you carved away back, but it's a really nice method for good registration and efficiency too, because you use one block instead of carving multiple. There are some pros and cons of each method. I'm going to go rinse this off, hop back here to carve with you. See you soon. In the next lesson, we'll carve the dark color layer of your block. See you there. 17. Reduction: Carve Your Dark Layer: For this lesson, you'll need your carved block, your linoleum cutter handle, and your linoleum blades. Now that we've printed our first light layers, and those are off to dry for now lovely, it's time to start carving out information for our second layer, our dark layers, so in this case it's the red. This is why it's really handy to go back over your sketch before you carve or ink or anything with Sharpie for this type of printmaking. Because once I washed and dried this block completely, I still have my notes, so that's really handy to have. I'm actually just going to come in here for myself and just fill in a bit more with my pencil into these spaces that are going to be red, because when I see them filled in it helps my mind to remember that they're not meant to be carved, that I leave them there. I'm going to fill that in just to give myself a little more of a map and guidance. Then I'm going to come back over these and just thicken those up, but that looks pretty good. Basically, I'm just cross-checking this now with both my main image and seeing those areas are filled in and also with the red layer. I'm just double-checking before I begin carving since once it's gone, it's gone. The star with the radiating lines, those are filled in. These seed images, those are filled in and then this rim is filled in. I'm going to start, as always, with my one blade and I'll just carve all the contours and then I'll come back in with some larger blades, probably three or two to carve out some of these areas. I'm just going to get going and you can carve alongside me. I just put a fresh sheet of large paper down, and I'm going to tape it down too, because I wanted to leave my registration setup underneath so when I can go back to printing, it can be really smooth and simple. I can just pull this layer off. I wanted something though that wasn't my inking station, because I don't want my little scraps to interfere with inking. If you're in a small apartment, this could be one method where you just put sheets of paper and layer them so that you can just scoop all of your carvings off and move the paper off and you have your inking station clean. If you have enough space or another partio or desk, where you could carve and the shavings won't interact with the inking, that's great too. It's just really about keeping your inking space clean so nothing interferes with the ink itself. I have the contours of that layer, the red layer, outlined in my one. Now I'm going to hop back in with, I'm going to use my two to carve away some of the smaller areas. I'll start with this outer rim, because that part is the orange grind, or the grapefruit grind, I should say. You can see here that just having that groove from the one is so nice to guide larger blades. That's looking pretty good and then I'm just going to cross-check against that red layer. Looks good, it looks like it's all raised and good to go, might be a little bit of carving texture which will be nice. You can see this is why it's called reduction printing, because now this is the same block and we're just left with that top layer. Once we print this, it's pretty much done because we don't get to print that base layer anymore. That's how it's very different than the multiple block technique, but again, it adds value to the prints. You're working with one block, there's potentially better registration with this method. I'm excited to see how it turns out in the next step when we start inking our second layer. I'm going to make sure to clear all of this off. In fact, I'll show you why I do this paper method, it's so easy, watch this. I'm just going to move these to the side and get everything off of them. Then I'm going to give my block a good wipe and pat and set that to the side. Set my carving tools and blades to the side. Now what's so easy is I'm just going to untape this top piece of paper. Then I have my print station ready to go, totally clean, no carving shavings left anywhere. That's one good technique if you want to just keep it clean and you're in a smaller desk or space. In the next lesson, we'll ink and print your dark color layer. See you there. 18. Reduction: Ink & Print Your Dark Color: For this lesson, you'll need your carved block from the last lesson, your dark ink color, a soft rubber brayer, a baren, a wooden spoon or a hard rubber brayer, a palette knife or a plastic knife, an acrylic sheet for inking and blank sheets of your art paper for printing. Now my orange layers are dry, so your first layers are probably dry too now that you've carved your second layer, so it is time to print our second layer, which is going to be that darker ink. For me, that's the red. I am just going to double-check, feels good, and get my red ink station setup. I have my palette and my knife brayer and then my red ink. I'm getting that set up here, get my layer here, and then I have my prints ready to go to line up with this registration here. Again, remember to check for the orientation, so top, up that way, so that's good. I'm just going to start inking up here. Getting this red ink out. Give it a good stir, it's quite a bit. I'm going to pull out my first orange. I didn't think to label the top of this. That's a little funny, which is what I mentioned in the last lesson that you can do. What I'm looking for here is actually just these different texture marks in the background to let me know what's the top and since I'm going to cut these down again, I'm just going to mark that. I'm well aware and I can tell here just based on this little mark on the very left, that's right there. This one's right there, and then this double thing is right there and this section is that. That's going to be my main point to make sure the design is a little trickier just because that's the only telling point. That's why it's really handy to come in and write the orientation on your paper too, which I just totally spaced in this step, and that way, once you print, you are good to go. Now I've labeled all the tops of those, and now I'm going to place this making sure top is up and I'm going to grow on my hard brayer. There it is. That is a reduction print. It's the same result as the multi-block print. I did a little bit more texture in the background on that one. But it's just a different method of getting there. Now I'm going to just finish by printing the other four in this addition using this reduction method. I will just continue that process, just inking up the red and then printing in alignment on the orange. This was the fifth out of my five, so I now have my addition of five prints created from the reduction method and I can cut this down, cut those margins down, and sign it just like I showed you in the last technique and so if you'd like to do the same, you can do that as well. In the next lesson, we'll clean up all of our materials. I'll see you there. 19. Clean Up: For this lesson, you'll need all of your inked materials, a utility bucket or a sink, warm water, and a rag to dry everything off. To clean up your materials, it's really simple since we're using water-based inks. You can just run everything under warm water in your sink. I usually like to use a plastic utility bucket to dunk everything, and I'll dunk all of my inked materials except for my blocks because I don't want the blocks to get nicked or damaged by anything in the bucket of water. Then make sure that everything's totally dry once everything's washed off and clean because you just want to make sure that it's all good to go the next time you go to print. That's it for clean up. It's super simple, just warm water. In the next lesson, we'll talk about sharing your beautiful art prints with the world. I'll see you there. 20. Share Your Class Project: Now that you've created your addition of beautiful two-color art prints inspired by food, it's time to share them to the class project. You can either scan one of your prints or take a photo of it and upload it to the class project section so I can see the beautiful work that you've created today. I can't wait to see that and to cheer you on. In the next lesson, we'll talk about next steps. I'll see you there. 21. Thank You & Next Steps: Thank you so much for joining me for today's class. I hope you're walking away with new skills to up-level your block printing process. If you enjoy this course, please leave a review. Don't forget that you can dive deeper into this practice by downloading your free set of intermediate block printing templates at my website, at www.printsandplants.com/colorblocktemplates. I'd also love to keep hanging out, so come find me on Instagram @prints_and_plants. Be sure to hit the "Follow" button here on Skillshare to be updated about my future classes and come join the printsandplants table. There you'll receive weekly creative tips, inspiration, and behind the scenes pics at the studio. You can join for free at www.printsandplants.com/jointhetable. Friend, it has been such a joy to have you here in the studio. I'd love when you stop by for your class and I can't wait to see you next time. Until then, happy printing. 22. What's Next? Beginner's Guide to Fabric Printing: Are you ready to dive deeper into the world of block printmaking? Then I recommend you take my beginner's guide to fabric printing class. In this class, you'll learn how to use the techniques you learn today to create things like tote bags, napkins, and dish towels. To find this class and all of the classes that I teach, you can click on my name, which will take you to my profile, and then you can scroll down to my classes, and it is under the printmaking section. I'll see you there.