My return to woodblock printmaking during the summer leads me to search the internet for inspiring artists in the medium. The Japanese are credited with taking woodblock to its' highest form. However, the Chinese are credited with inventing the medium and spreading it to Korea and Japan. Here are some excellent Chinese woodblock printmakers I find inspiring.

Li Yanpeng - born 1958

Li Yanpeng is an outstanding Chinese printmaker - in many ways. He is extremely serious about his art prints. He creates them in reduction woodblock technique - realistic images of rural scenes from the Loess Plateau along the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtse River. His compositions are painstakingly created with extremely fine lines.

Li Yanpeng is one of today's recognized and established top artists in China. His woodblock prints are rare and prices are elevated. However not expensive when you take into consideration how much time and effort it requires to create one design and when you look at the edition sizes of only 20-30.

The artist's subjects are unusual - goats, cattle, donkeys and the local people from the Loess Plateau. No artist who strives for fame and recognition would normally choose such subjects. It is nothing that caters to an international art collector public. But that is Li Yanpeng. He lives for his art, and he could care less about what an international art scenes buys easily. And nevertheless, or maybe just because of his "neglect" of the market, Li Yanpeng has become so successful.

Zhao Haipeng - born 1945

Zhao Haipeng is a well-known Chinese printmaker who has exhibited in more than 20 countries outside China. His works represent the traditional Chinese method of woodblock printmaking with water-soluble inks.
The Woodcut Art of Zhao Haipeng

Mr. Zhao Haipeng's subjects and his technique are rooted in the typical style of the artists of Eastern China. The focus is on landscape images and nature. The old tradition in Chinese arts of "expressing more by showing less" is omnipresent in the artist's works.

Zhao Haipeng works in the traditional method of woodcutting using one separate block for each color (in contrast to the reduction woodblock print). The edition size is - typical for Chinese printmakers - small with 25 to 100 copies. All prints that we have seen were signed, numbered, titled and dated in pencil on the lower margin. The impressions are printed on a hand-made, thick Chinese paper - a kind of laid paper.

Li Xiu - born 1943

Li Xiu is outstanding among China's leading artists in more than one way. First of all she is an excellent printmaker, secondly she is a woman artist and thirdly she belongs to the Yi ethnic minority in Yunnan.
Back Home after Graduation

The artistic breakthrough came for Li Xiu with a print titled Back Home after Graduation. It shows a girl from the ethnic Yi minority at her arrival by train back home. The print was done in 1977 and is kept in the style of the period - the style well-known from the Chinese propaganda posters. The image is beautiful and the art work made Li Xiu famous. The print was first shown at a national Chinese exhibition celebrating the "50th anniversary of China Prints". Later the art work went on a tour to France where it was shown to the French people.

After "Back Home after Graduation", Li Xiu began to work on several new series that turned out to be quite spectacular. They were titled "Ah, what a Horse Caravan" (1982), "The Quiet Lugu Lake" (1982). "The Years Dragging Long" (1984), "The Hengduan Mountains" (1988) or "Limpid Water" (1991).

Since "Back Home after Graduation" Li Xiu has experienced a great career as an artist and as an outstanding woman coming from an ethnic minority. Since then she has engaged herself not only in arts, but also in social and political issues promoting and supporting the role of women and ethnic minorities in China.
Editions, Technique and Style

Li Xiu's art style is not uninfluenced from what is today called the Yunnan Art School in modern printmaking. This term describes a certain direction in printmaking that has been born in Yunnan province and has over the last years become famous outside China as well. The common bonds are the use of strong and vibrant colors and the focus on depicting the exotic landscapes and the life and customs of a great variety of ethnic minority groups in this South-West province of China.

Li Xiu prints with rather thick oil-based inks comparable to the way how Hao Ping works - another artist from Yunnan. The edition size is small as usual for Chinese artists - at least for the 1980s and 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium. And as usual for Chinese artists, the prints are titled, dated, numbered and signed.

Here is the next image I am hoping to use for my next woodblock. It is a frescoe on the inside of an incredibly old wooden church in northern Romania (the wood planking can be seen in the image) taken while on a bicycle tour with my friend Trent Herbst. This will be my first attempt at color since taking the Moku Hanga (Japanese woodblock) printmaking course at Druckstelle workshop in Berlin. I hope to finish up the registration problems and other corrections needed on my previous woodblock "Winter Lilies" and express it in inks on fine japanese printing paper soon. When it is finished I will post it here.

Now that the semester of intaglio at UW-La Crosse is over, I have the summer to return to woodblock printmaking. This is the first proofing of plates started during the summer of '05, but which I was unable to finish before class started in the fall. All in all I am pleased with the image. There are a few carving corrections necessary, trying to figure out how to get my ink tones to print better, and then a printing on fine japanese paper for the finished image. Thanks to my friend and printmaking instructor Eva Pietzcker for her earlier suggestions on how to get "blacker" blacks. I was over printing the dark grey portions of the plates onto the black areas (it involved less carving). One would think the black would over print the greys, but in fact the greys lighten up the black. Just another step in the progression of a printmaker.

The last few waning days of the spring semester 2006 at UW-L were spent trying out some suggested experiments in Krishna Reddy's book "Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking." These experiments were concerned with ink viscosity and roller durometer (hardness). The first two plate were aquatinted, and the intaglio color (that which was rolled and wiped into the etch) was printed as a double drop after the two surface colors were printed. The other plate had no aquatint and all colors were printed at the same time.

As usual the final day of class was a very fun and enjoyable time. The students brought "treats" to share and the litho press which served as the serving table was overfilling to other counters. Each student gave a brief talk about their prints, and then it was time to reveal our "secret friends." All in all a great time.

A special moment was when "The Lost" who came to share the day shared with us the special news he has been accepted into grad school in Las Cruces New Mexico where he will join printmaking sister Bonnie Schetsky.