Carving Up A Time

The Portland Museum's CeLOUbrate Print festival is coming up soon, in preparation for that they're currently hosting woodcarving workshops around town.

One of the highlights of the festival is making prints with a steamroller, and for that you need to do a little woodcarving.

Took part in one of the free workshops myself last week, at the Lousiville Visual Arts location in Portland (a neighborhood of Louisville, not the city) .

Was surprisingly simple and easy, even for someone like me with next to no experience at drawing or carving, just show up with a design or idea and they walk you through the process of getting it onto your wood block and carving it out.

They provided a 12" x 12" block of MDF, along with carving tools and contact paper. You used the contact paper to trace your design onto the block and then carved out all the bits you wanted to be white/inkless on the print. All while trying to avoid carving your hands in the process.

Had a good bit of fun making the wood chips fly, snapped a few photos whenever my thumb starting going numb. The only unfun part is having to wait until the festival on April 18th to ink it up and make prints.

Now to see if I can hitch a ride on the steamroller. . .