This is the new project I’m currently working on, and as the title suggests, it’s going to be centered on the Three Precious Children from the Shinto religion: Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, and Susanoo.
I’ve wanted to illustrate these deities for a while now. A fun fact is they give their names to the Sharingan powers and since I’ve been rewatching Naruto like crazy as of late, I thought, why not? It gave me a good excuse to try the “Battleship Grey” linoleum from Speedball, and I must say, it’s a very nice medium to work on. But it has some negatives. For example, it warps a lot. So if you want a nice and even surface to work on, you need to glue it to a wood surface, put a lot of weight on top of it, and let it sit for a while. This is specially necessary when you want to print the linocut, since you need a level surface to properly apply ink and then print (and also avoid messing up your margins and registry!) All this extra prep work is boring and tedious, but the surface is worth the extra effort. The level of detail you can give to the engravings is amazing, and the palm tools work incredibly well, but with the traditional ease of working with linoleum. A very nice material indeed.
Yes, we eat fruit while we work around here 🙂
I’ll be uploading the fresh new prints soon to the Engravings gallery!
—tavo
Leave a Reply