If you’ve spoken with me from the summer of 2024 to present, the chances are that I’ve mentioned a woodblock printing event involving a steamroller. This is it, the giant woodblock I printed with a steamroller. The “I” in that last sentence is much more of a “we” since there’s no way I could have done this alone. Maybe there is, but I definitely didn’t do it alone.
I used my summer travels in 2024 to leave my computer behind and stick to analog-only methods to sketch ideas.
In fact, with these sketches (and when it came time to actually draw what I was cutting out of my block), I went full Euclidian and only used a straight edge and a compass, as rulers are for suckers anyway.
My initial idea was something like, “how can you divide a hexagon with 3-fold rotational symmetry using one, two, and three lines?” Not a hard question to answer, but I wanted to combine something very sharp and geometric with something free-flowing and organic.
In preparation for the steamroller event, I took a woodblock printing class because I had never actually cut a woodblock before. Ridiculous, I know. These are some of the things I did in class:
Those were the kind of flowing, organic, Jeremy Bearimies I wanted. After these small practice pieces and sketching out what would and wouldn’t work, I made my first full size draught of the finished idea:
and then the second:
In the end, I used the basic composition from the second version, but freehand drew the squiggle as it interacted with the hexagons.
The video here shows the process of sketching out the design, using a router to get rid of most of the white space, and the group printing process.
In the end, I got two really nice prints and one…interesting one. Why didn’t I just make more? The video shows how involved and time consuming making just one print like this is, so no, I’m happy with two good prints.
Here, we see the battle-scarred block after printing, with masking tape blocking areas where ink made its way into the generous amount of white space on the block (which I’ll try to avoid in future designs).
As you can see on the large format draughts, I intentionally left spaces to later go back and stamp the finished piece with a hexagonal design in a different color along the border. I ended up spending a whole lot of time on these little accents, but it was worth it.
The hexagon is actually a Truchet tile. Usually, Truchet tiles are a set of tiles. This was sort of a Truchet monotile since it has all the elements which could have been split into multiple tiles all together.
Figuring out exactly how to make a stamp to hand print the fabric took some trial and error. In the end, what worked best was a rubber stamp and fabric ink set with an iron.
The added bonus is that it’s designed so that it can be stamped at any 60° rotation and the lines not only continue, but preserve the correct over-under alternation of a knot diagram.
Investigating the idea of a Truchet monotile led to its use in other projects, especially with thirty unique Truchet-tiled cubes.
The image here shows several imprints of a smaller rubber stamp, randomly rotated and connected.
There was one more finishing touch which had me peeking into the fiber arts realm: being printed on cotton muslin, the whole thing was destined to fray to ribbons in no time, so I stitched some very simple borders. This also gave me a chance to attach a hanging system so I could actually display it somewhere.
Since I basically had an edition of two prints, I went ahead and made the two slightly different, using blue thread and ink for the stamps.
Here is the finished piece, hanging on a gallery wall:
This piece was part of the Knox Arts Alliance Summer 2025 Members Show.