Year of the Ox Postcard Print underway...

I know I'm starting a little late on this small print with the Chinese New Year only a week away, but better late than never.

My Year of the Rat postcard prints sold very well on Etsy throughout most of the year with people buying them as gift cards for babies born last year and for older people who's birthday's fall in previous years of the rat.

My Ox print is a little different from other prints I've produced in that there is no key block, no linework holding the image together. It's closer in style to a lot of images produced by modern woodblock printmakers in the 1960's and 70's and has slight echoes of that period by transforming the ox into a "Spacehopper" (a rubber balloon toy which was very popular during my childhood.)

I never owned one but remember being really disappointed when I had a go on a friend's spacehopper. I'd imagined that you could really bounce on them, that you'd be propelled by the bounce, but in reality you had to do all the work with your legs.

The spacehopper was just a big orange rubber bag of air that was more hinderance than help. Life lesson number 17, age 6.

Back to the print... What you see here is the rough image, coloured in Photoshop, printed out (in reverse) and pasted onto the blocks. I'll be using 2 shina ply blocks with 2 impressions on each, green, light brown/pink, flesh and dark brown/black with a little overprinting here and there to create other tones.

I'll be getting the blocks cut while I wait for an animation client to decide what he wants and hopefully get printing by the end of the week.