Woman in Garden No. 1
Noah Overby
Graphite drawing with woodblock print
Images size: 5.5 x 3.25 inches
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Woman in Garden No. 2
Noah Overby
India ink drawing with woodblock print
Image size: 5.5 x 3.25 inches
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Woman in Garden No. 3
Noah Overby
Walnut ink drawing with woodblock print
Image size: 5.5 x 3.25 inches
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Woman in Garden No. 4
Noah Overby
Graphite drawing with woodblock print
Images size: 5.5 x 3.25 inches
.
Woman in Garden No. 5
Noah Overby
India ink drawing on paper with woodblock print
Image size: 5.5 x 3.25 inches
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I just completed a series of drawing based on my woodblock print “Venus and Garden.” I have been looking at the amazing woodblock prints of Edvard Munch lately and thanks to the book “Edvard Munch The Complete Graphic Works” by Gerd Woll I learned that Munch used a ‘coping saw’ to cut his woodblocks into pieces as if making a jigsaw puzzle. This allowed him to ink areas of his image with different colors and then reassemble them before printing. The advantage to doing this is that he did not have to carve a new block for each color that he wished to print, and he could create multicolor prints with a single pass through the press.
I adapted the idea by cutting away the figure from my woodblock. This allowed me to print several blanks that I could use as the basis for new drawings, reinserting different figures into the environment. Since I’m always interested in what I call the language of the drawing and experimenting with different qualities of line and media it was a really fun experiment and seemed to work out great!
Although the garden scene that forms the background for these figure studies is fictional it reminds me of my trip to Versailles years ago. The beautiful garden with classical sculptures and fountains of flowing water made quite an impression on me at the time. I tried to capture the feeling of frivolity and peaceful sanctuary that the gardens represented for me in these figures.
Available in my Etsy shop for $35 each.
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