Childhood Story

About my project

Our theme this month is “Childhood Story”, meaning a book or story form your childhood memories.

One of the books I read (and was read) growing up was Drummer Hoff. The art is fantastic and the story builds into a fun rhyme with each page. I credit this book with my love of the block print art style. My sister has our original copy from growing up, so I ordered one from an online used book store. Unfortunately, it did not come with the cover. My intention was to make a new slip cover for my project.

Building off my earlier prototyping with turning my cat into a stamp, I wanted to move into actual block printing (relief printmaking). Like a stamp, the idea is you have a raised surface that gets inked, and then press that onto paper to make a print.

In my case, that means figuring out a design, transferring that design onto a block of wood/linoleum, and then hand carving out the negative space so only the design is raised. If your are lucky you remembered to fip your design before carving.

I made it as far as “figuring out a design” step.

How I made it

I read through my copy of Drummer Hoff and found a few images I wanted to use, namely Hoff’s drum, a bird, some grass/flowers, and a “Ready, Aim” speech bubble. None of these existed together, they were elements of larger pictures that I liked. I used my flatbed scanner to Tron my way into some digital assets. Then I used photo editing software to cut out the pieces I wanted, and turned those into black and white SVG files.

At this point I realized there is no way I was getting an actual block print made so turned this into a strictly digital project. I created a simple background and made an attempt at the main design for a book cover (assuming I ever printed it out). I love the art style but the background didn’t really mesh with the rest. I didn’t like the final result so didn’t go any further.

Fear not! I revisit these ideas in my later Project 2.0 and Redwall creative projects.