Yellow Jacket that Attacked Me Woodcut

This one has been a long time coming. It was drawn from a dead yellow jacket that had attacked me as part of a swarm. Apparently, I pissed them off while clearing brush for a fence. The beasts chased me into the kitchen where they repeatedly stung me until ultimately meeting their doom. These are no cute little honey bees – I was laid up full of wasp venom until the next day.

I finished cutting the master block close to a year ago, then set it aside. I have returned to it with a bunch of new tricks and techniques and am pretty happy with the results. Also, being a smaller piece, it was great for answering a few questions ahead of some larger stuff I’m working on.

I printed by hand on Kozo paper. Kozo is transluscent, has a beautiful texture and really absorbs the Daniel Smith relief inks nicely. Those relief inks are incredible to work with. I was using litho ink for everything as I had in college. Never again! Using these inks saves a lot of ink ($) and time as they are easier to mix, roll up and clean up. Plus the they print like a dream. Also, I feel like I have really been missing out by not starting to hand print earlier. Former attempts at hand printing were less than successful because I was trying to use BFK and similar too-thick papers. Now I know.