#Printmaking Tools

[marywoodartdept]

Star Book

Our Printmaking blogger, Rebecca, shows us a wonderful book that she created. She runs us through the steps that she took to create this book, and all of the different materials that she used to create it. Take a look at this fun, interactive book!

This was one of my favorite books to create. Not only was the process of this book fun, but there were so many steps to release built up creative freedom! I First made two linocuts of two frogs for the insides, and covers of my star book. The front and back cover have a dark sage green fabric binded onto the cover, with a mix of three colored strings twisted for a visual interest, and to tie the…

[tizzymcwizzy]

finally got around to carving some eraser stamps this summer!! ive wanted to try my hand at linocut for the longest time and it was actually a ton of fun :D

[c-kiddo]

my absolute dream house is a little bit midcentury (i saw a beautiful house on instagram) but ultimately minimalist but using warm materials (off white walls in warm grey or blue tones with hardwood floors is my rly rly favourite combination. airy). minimalist and highly practical design. storage and space for the colour in the room to come from things i already use , art stuff, hiking gear, plants, dishes. but space for clear surfaces, space for resting my brain and eyes and everything to be put away. big window that faces trees or a wide open space, not something overstimulating. i would love that

[blessedscavengers]

some ye olden day sheers

made in 2024

[misspjsuperior]

BERKANA woodcut print rune deck hand made by PJ Superior features each of the 24 Elder Futhark runes (plus a ”Wyrd” card) carved by hand into birch wood and printed in a hand cranked barrel press. (The backs printed with a spoon.) Along with the rune symbols, each associated Norse word along with a simple, deeply meaningful illustrative border is carved into the wood from which these cards are printed. The Norse rune symbols are still the main visual focus.

The woodcut print method used to create this hand crafted set of cards ensures that the wood carving typical of the most ancient sets of casting runes is still present in this contemporary deck.

I call this rune deck BERKANA after the 18th rune in the Elder Futhark alphabet, because it means “birch” which is the same type of wood used for the carving of this deck. In runic divination, Berkana represents growth, renewal, and hope.

A home made guide booklet, sewn by hand, is included to share interpretations for divination. The guidebook includes cultural background and history of the Elder Futhark runes, as well as insights into the inspirations and meanings of the artistic imagery accompanying each symbol.

Limited edition of 50 funded via Kickstarter

A handful of decks now available:

[mildmayfoxe]

ok 👍

[pandakong]

Doggust day 16 - Stabyhoun! Its name means “stand by me.” 🥹

[noodler1]

Cat In the Bun Compartment (Lithograph)

[cypressure]

the block for the raptor linocut is ready to carve! can’t believe i gridded the whole thing but i don’t have access to a big enough printer to make the transfer LOL

[trees-and-flowers-and-buildings]

In college I was never really a big fan of linocut (team copper plate intaglio here), but I’ve found myself doing it a lot more lately because of work and also because I don’t really have access to an etching tank at this moment (hopefully will soon). Was so tired of my raggedy speedball lino-cutters and ordered myself a this flexcut set and I’m super excited!

Kind of beautiful looking and also heard good things about them. Sharpener is a plus too.

[marywoodartdept]

Lets Try Woodcut!

This week, WhereCreativityWorks is happy to introduce our new Printmaking Blogger, Becca, a graphic design major with a love for all things printmaking. In her first post, she shares about trying woodcut with acrylics. #MarywoodArt #Printmaking #DayOne

For my first blog post I would like to introduce myself as a free spirit when it comes to the processes of creating. I believe in repurposing things of all sorts to create something that speaks to me. I also enjoy printmaking of all types, and something I had never done but always had interest in was creating a woodcut! For my first woodcut piece I found inspiration from my summer trip to Aruba,…

[fromthedust]

Jake Muirhead (American, working in Maryland)

Oil Can - etching with aquatint

www.jakemuirhead.com

[cissa-calls]

I frickin love printmaking because it is art MEANT TO BE SHARED

[beakerhoneydew]

Literally earlier I was like wait I’m like fully stocked on art supplies I can make whatever art I want. And then I drew mushrooms for like 45 minutes it ruled.

[cryptotheism]

How do cards gain meaning in an occult sense? Like, both tarot and french-suited playing cards started as game pieces, but they have gained an understood meaning. Is it just someone whips up an organized table of connected ideas or is each card interpreted from a certain framework?

Oh good question!

Many things that we now consider staples of western magic are ideas that have been added to over generations by several layers of thinkers. Tarot Divination specifically is an excellent example of this!

In 1770, A french printmaker and occultist going by Etteilla published a book about how to do cartomancy with a 32-card Piquet deck. He writes down some simple but strict associations for the cards, and makes what is probably the first mention of reversals in carotmancy. He said that he learned the system "from an Italian." Now, its unclear how much of the system is his own invention, people have been doing cartomancy for as long as there's been cards, but the text presents a larval, bare-bones version of the cartomancy methods we know and love today.

Its 1780-ish. The Rosetta stone hasn't been discovered yet. Occult-inclined Europeans are obsessed with Egypt. That's where our boy Trismegistus is from! There's a concept in Egyptian mythology called The Book of Thoth, a mythical book of spells penned by the God of Knowledge himself. This was the Holy Grail for European Occult Egpytaboos.

In 1781, Antoine Court de Gébelin claimed that Tarot cards were the "original book of Thoth," Saying that Tarot cards had been used by ancient Egyptian priests for their own magical ceremonies, and that their designs contained ancient mystical secrets. This is 100% not true, but he writes a pretty fun pseudohistory for Tarot that involves Romani people bringing the decks to Europe through the Levant where they then taught its esoteric secrets to several Popes.

Then in 1783, Ettellia responded with another book. Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots ("Way to recreate yourself with the deck of cards called tarots") Where Ettellia basically claims "uhm actually I knew about tarot divination way before Court de Gebelin published that big ass book. But anyway here's an interpretation of Tarot symbology that includes multiple references to Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and Greek mythology." But the smartest thing he did was include spread methods that involved Thoth and Numerology. Napoleonic Occultists fucking loved Thoth and numerology.

In 1788, he formed a little magical society for the express purpose of discussing and workshopping ideas for Tarot divination. In 1789, he made a TRULY smart decision, and published a Tarot deck that was Specifically For Magic, and that basically cemented Tarots place in magical history.

Occultists just kept iterating! Someone would speculate "maybe the suits correspond to the elements" and people went "yeah, they correspond to the elements! That makes this tool even more fun and interesting to use!" Then people go "What if the suits and the elements also correspond to parts of the Self?" and people went "Sure they do! That makes this tool even more interesting!"

But its also not just one thread. Eventually you get the Golden Dawn saying "The Major Arcana correspond to the nodes and paths on our version of the Quabbalistic Sefirot, you know, the hermetic version with a Q." and some occultists responded "Idk about that! Love what you've done with the color symbology though!"

The development of magical ideas is an iterative process. It is people whipping up a table of correspondences, but that table needs a mythology to keep it together. Originally, the mythology that gave tarot "power" was its Egyptian pseudohistory, but these days its the fact that occultists have been iterating on and fine-tuning this system for hundreds of years.

Humans don't think in tables of information, they think in stories. The cool thing about stories is that they're flexible. If magic is anything, its learning how to engineer stories to make the tables of information more effective.

I'm gonna plug my patreon where I post all of my occult research if you wanna see more stuff like this