Schedule: Sat., September 10, 9 am to 4:00 pm, and Sun., September 11, 9 am to 4:00 pm
Cost: $310 (Materials Included)
To Register: info@covestreetarts.com or (207) 808-8911; Payment due upon registration.

Capacity: 12 people

Level: All levels are welcome.

Description: Learn how to carve lines into a pine board and paint your designs with watercolors to create textured prints in multiple colors.

About the Instructor

Lisa Houck works in watercolor, oil on wood, ceramics, mosaics and etching. Each medium allows her to invent new ways to express her view of nature through color and pattern. Her artwork has been exhibited widely, and is in numerous public and private collections, including The Boston Athenaeum, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Fidelity Investments, four libraries in Broward County Florida, Hale and Dorr, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Statement: I studied printmaking in the 70's at the Rhode Island School of Design, and printmaking has remained an important part of my work during the past forty years. Recently I have been working in white line woodcut, a technique that was invented in Provincetown, MA about 100 years ago. I carve delicate lines into a pine board and then print using watercolors to create images that feel like paintings. I used this technique to illustrate my first children's book: The Garden Grows all in a Row.

About the Medium

White Line Woodcut is a technique developed by Blanche Lazell and others in Provincetown, MA in the 1920’s. Inspired by European modernism and American crafts techniques, Lazell developed this simple woodblock method to simplify some of the techniques used in Japanese woodblock printing.

In this class, you will start with carving linear drawings into a pine block and then print multiple color areas using watercolor washes. Printing is done with a spoon or a rock or a Japanese tool called a baren. This simple technique allows for multiple colors from one block and the results are painterly and textured. This is a printmaking method that can be continued at home without any special equipment. Please bring some drawings, photos or other sources of inspiration for your prints.