Caterpillar D8 print

Caterpillar crawler tractors have always held my fascination. As a child I found them terrifying with their roar and clanging of the tracks, their unbridled power all accompanied by the heat of the sun, the dust, the smell of the laterite soil being overturned, but at the same time they were very interesting. I was always hanging around when one of them was parked behind the house or when visiting with my dad in the field.

This picture is of me when a new disk plough was being assembled on our lawn. What the picture doesn't show, is the almost two feet deep furrow the Cat driver ploughed into the lawn when he picked up the plough and forgot to lift the disks. My mum wasn't amused.

Now, the print. I found this D8 parked - and it looks like forever - in a paddock north of Tairua, East coast of The Coromandel.

First the pencil sketch to plan the areas for cutting and visualise the print to be. Next redraw it on a piece of minogami - a thin paper with a backing, which can be rubbed off after it is pasted onto a block of wood. I lowered the blade and parked it slightly nose up, looks a bit sexier that way.

Pasted the minogami image ( sen-gaki ) onto the block and rubbed off its backing. A bit rough this attempt but OK to work with. It's down to cutting the block now. After cutting this keyblock it was used to print 4 images on minogami again ( kyogo ), those to be used to plan the colours and subsequent cutting of 4 colour blocks. Now back to printing.

Paper size is 23 x 15.7 cm, image size 21 x 13.7 cm

all images copyright  ©  to acw ten broek