Tub Toys: "Sneaky Snark"

6" x 6"
Woodcut with watercolors on Stonehenge

Here is the last of 5 tub toy woodcuts I made this week. The others were "Splashy Crab", "Sated Gator", "Sea Star Veneer", and "Gleeful Turtle".

Goodnight, pinky. 

Tub Toys: "Gleeful Turtle"

6" x 6"
Woodcut with watercolors on Stonehenge

Here is the fourth of 5 tub toy woodcuts I'm messing around with this week. The first three were "Splashy Crab", "Sated Gator", and "Sea Star Veneer". I knew I wanted to write some brief text in cursive before I knew what I wanted to write. I decided on "rip and tear" because I imagined the turtle was ripping open the wrapping on a present, and I also liked the contrast of the subtle violence of the words with the overall soft and cheerful tone of the image. 

Tub Toys: "Sea Star Veneer"

6" x 6"
Woodcut with watercolors on Stonehenge

Here is the third of 5 tub toy woodcuts I'm messing around with this week. The first two were "Splashy Crab" and "Sated Gator." Those two and the two that are coming are more cartoonish characters, where this tub toy was more of a flat, abstracted representation of the actual animal, thus I turned it into a sort of glib overlay. 

Tub Toys: "Sated Gator"

6" x 6"
Woodcut with watercolors on Stonehenge

Here the second of 5 tub toy woodcuts I'm messing around with this week. "Splashy Crab" was the first and is posted here. 

Tub Toys: "Splashy Crab"

6" x 6"
Woodcut with watercolors on Stonehenge

I made five small woodcut stamps of tub toys representing some other water-dwelling species that were also alive during the time of the ammonites and dinosaurs. They will ultimately end up in the background in the Nautilus and Ammonite book project, but for this week I'm having some fun adding watercolor to some of the proofs.

Another influencing factor here is that I'm currently teaching a "Chemistry of Watercolor Paints" unit to 8th graders through SNAP, and why should my students have all the fun?