David Petersen's Blog: 2021 Bookplate Process

Every year since 2012 I've been creating a new Mouse Guard bookplate as a special item for fans. The idea is that, with these signed by me, even if you can't bring me your physical copy of a Mouse Guard book, this bookplate can be glued in making your copy signed.

I'll be releasing this year's new bookplate in my online store in March when I'm hosting my during the #ONLINECON event on my Twitch channel. Currently you can buy several bookplates from past years (and see blogposts for those bookplates at the bottom of this post). For this Blogpost I wanted to share the process for creating the art for the bookplate this year.

I knew that I wanted to do an image that had a woodblock feel to it. My degree is in printmaking, so I was also drawn to the idea of actually carving a block (or perhaps a few blocks) for the process instead of digitally faking it (I split the difference on that––I'll talk more about the digital fakery later). For inspiration I was looking at blockprints from Japan as well as the Arts & Crafts movement landscape prints from California. A fan of mine suggested I check out the work of David Lance Goines for inspiration, and I found this poster he did for the Berkley Horticultural Nursery...it became the starting point. I knew I wasn't going to do all the hexagon background pattern, but I could incorporate the pose, the sunburst-halo, and the gathering of flora.

I usually don't draw digitally, but in this case, I did an entirely digital layout for the art. I changed the flowers to some type of grain being harvested, which is also why I decided to add the scythe. Having carved lots of blocks for printing before, I kept that experience in mind as I made my lines...not to make shapes that would be too difficult to carve around, lines that would be bold and could be easily formed with knives.

As for the colors, I got a little ambitious. Each color should mean a separately carved block––and it was at this point where, liking the look of the colors, I decided to compromise. I'd carve the darkest linework as a traditional print, and get all the color through digital trickery.

When I was in school, the technique for transferring an image from paper over to a wood block (or in this case, linoleum) I'd use graphite paper or rub pencil on the back of the paper and then retrace my drawing. But I found a tutorial online for transferring an inkjet printout to linoleum that seemed much easier. First I gently roughed up the lino surface with some fine grit sandpaper, and then painted it with a slightly thinned out wood glue.

I ended up doing this process twice because I screwed up the first time and thinned the glue out too much.

While the glue is getting tacky, I placed the printout of my linework onto the linoleum. I smoothed out the paper with a rubber brayer. This made sure the paper was really in good enough contact with the glue to bond properly.

Then I had to wait. Wait for the glue to really dry. Not just a little, but truly dry (this may have also contributed to my first attempt failing and me needing to redo the process). I used a hair dryer for a bit to help with the process--but I still waited hours before attempting the next step.

With a damp towel, I rubbed the paper until the paper started to peel into little nubbins. It was important to to get the paper too wet––it can reactivate the glue, but just to get the paper to disintegrate into little balls of pulp, while leaving the ink bonded to the linoleum block. This was the step where I failed the first time, and I think the glue was too thinned out and wasn't dry enough, so everything washed away down to bare linoleum. There was still some paper material in areas that looked like fog over the design, but it was clear enough to see to carve.

I streamed the carving process on my Twitch channel. I used the same carving knives I had in college––which frankly were too big for this project, but I still managed.

The basic idea of relief printing is that you want to carve away any part you don't want to print––so you leave the parts you want to print standing. It's about working in the negative space.

With the same brayer (roller) from earlier, I inked up the surface of the block and pulled a few prints of the linework once the block was carved. I also took an uncarved block and printed a few full squares. I didn't pull perfect prints of these, the goal wasn't a solid color, but a subtle texture with imperfections. These were to use for the digital trickery step--I could use the texture of them for the color areas.

With the all the bits scanned, I could start the digital trickery step. You can see in the layer menu that I have a layer for each color (each tinted to match the color scheme from my rough version) and then masked out (the black icon next to each layer) so that the color shows though only where I want it to. I still had to make makes that would look and feel like block printed shapes as I made the digital masks for where each color would show

Overall, I'm very pleased with the results. I think it looks like a block print, it looks like Mouse Guard, I got the satisfaction of doing some traditional printmaking again, but I didn't have to go through the headache of carving seven blocks and try to register them all to line up properly. The last step of the bookplate process was to add the 'This Book Belongs To:' text and the lines for a name and the edition numbering. I used parts of the border to copy and create those lines so they looked cohesive.

I hope you enjoy this new bookplate when it's released in March...and below you can look back at the past bookplates and the blogposts about them: