Marrying My Analog & Digital Art

Hey there!

This week, I’ve been thinking about how I can start combining the traditional art I’ve been creating with my digital work.

The nature of creating art for physical products means that everything needs to go through some sort of digitization process. But I’d love to find ways to maintain the handmade look and feel after it’s been brought into the digital space.

I’m experimenting with some techniques as I work on my next collection. At first I planned to create my new collection using only digital tools. I created these geometric motifs to turn into patterns—

While looking at them, I realized that they align perfectly with the type of work I’ve been creating during my block printing practice. So I decided to print them out and transfer them over to some rubber blocks and carve them into stamps. Here are the blocks all ready to be carved.

I will carve out all the areas that are blank and all the parts drawn in pencil will remain to be printed.

These blocks are four times larger than the ones I’ve been carving. I want them to be larger because I’ll be printing a single impression and scanning it into my computer. The larger the impression, the higher quality my scan will be and the more detail I can retain when I go to digitize.

I’ll be experimenting with different ways to digitize these and I’ll report back on the results! I’m also excited to be doing this because it means I’ll have a physical memento from the collection, not just something that lives on my computer.

I might even offer some small prints for sale. If receiving an original, hand-inked and printed piece of art from me sounds fun to you, let me know!

That’s all I have for you this week. Talk soon!

~Rachel