PRINTMAKING: Fish Two

This is the second post in my series of fish prints created using the woodblock printmaking method…for my experimental animated film titled Toxic Fish. Dramatically, after ocean fish are poisoned their bodies swell up, die and disintegrate. The static shape of the fish from the woodblock design starts firm before being flooded by toxins. It then falls apart to illustrate this. The method I employed was to gradually over-ink the block. This resulted in details being dampened into puddles…definition and sharpness were blurred and reduced into a dramatic sequence of atrophy.

A woodblock print with overlaid hand-colouring for the animated film Toxic Fish-© 1990 Michael Hill. — Woodblock print for my animated film *Toxic Fish*.
©1990 Dr. Michael Hill a.k.a. Doctor Comics.

Below is a photo of me carving one of the blocks using a Japanese chisel. I must add that this is not the recommended way to of doing it! It has been posed for a photograph and shows a compromised pose of the process for promotional purposes. The woodblock carving process is done on a fixed bench with one carving away from, not towards, one’s body.