How Inspiration Became Experimentation

I was out doing a mundane chore at my local hardware store searching for metal snips that will cut through an average screw. While I was searching the shelves and racks, I noticed several punches and awls next to the snips. I have recently begun collecting awls and punches because I feel drawn to experimenting with non-traditional tools for woodcut printmaking. I did this in the past by using a handheld Dremel. The result of those ambitious woodcut prints are shown here. Judith and Holofernes and Portrait of Rembrandt. I made these impressions by attaching a very small drill bit and drilling out the white space one whole at a time. These prints were very labor intensive and I abandoned the Dremel returning to traditional woodcutting tools.

Once again I am find myself wanting to experiment. I don't really know that there is a method to developing new printmaking techniques, but know my inspiration will lead me. So back to the hardware store. I saw these punches that would not just make a dot mark, but an actual circle punch and in three different sizes, too. As I stare at these tools and I am thinking how they will mark the wood and what sort of printed impression they will make. But, I purchase my snips and leave the circle punches for another time.

That other time came just a week later when I realized I could not do another print without giving these new tools a go. I purchased 2 of the 3 sizes and started working on a small print, 5" x 8", Shorebirds of Alameda. This woodcut is inspired and created entirely from my new tools.
I believe normally most creative inspiration revolves around developing the image through successively working, sometimes over a period of time, until the ideas of what you are trying to create and what your hands can actually do come together in a the final work of art. Subject matter is most often the source for the creativity behind all that long and hard work.

As I began using the new tools, I realized I had a lot of different options for how I was going to work with them. Figuring out my first print was a test, I freed myself from all preconceived notions of the proper method to use these tools and just go at it and make the first print. My initial reaction was mixed. The print itself was not especially fine or beautiful as it was a simple study of birds on the beach. But I also like the tools enough to continue. I found that their power is not in random striking of the punches creating this sort of scribble effect as you see in Alameda Shorebirds. Their power derives from the various patterns that I can concoct by varying the way I use the punches, chisels, and awl.