Tugboat Print Shop

(c) Tugboat Printship, used without permission

Every once and a while, we stumble upon a piece of art that infuriates us. Not because it's against our beliefs or is so terrible, but because it's simply amazing. While browsing Printeresting.org, a fantastic blog on printmaking (and a constant source of frustration for Monkey due to it's awesomeness), we stumbled upon Tugboat Printshop. They make Monkey want to punch himself in the face as they're such amazing printmakers.

So the image above is frickin' amazing. The "Bonfire" print is a woodcut print. Yes, that's right, it's a four-color woodcut print. That means the artists (Paul Roden + Valerie Lueth) carved the image into four wood blocks, then printed them over each other to get what is basically a full-color image out of four colors (basically the way CMYK inkjet printers work, but involving a LOT more time, skill, and crazy crazy amounts of dedication and patience).

(c) Tugboat Print Shop. Used without permission.

This other print of theirs is from their "The Deep Blue Sea" series and is on our "we want this" very close to the top. Narwals! Great color schemes! Block printing! Gah, very awesome. In another fit of awesomeness that makes Monkey's blood boil, they even decided to build this awesome little cart when they travel to craft fairs and such to sell their amazing wares.

The Tugboat Print Cart, photos stolen off Tugboat's blog.

Anyway, you should definitely go check them out. Monkey actually gets pretty infuriated by their amazingness, so he has to take a break from looking at their work or he might hurt himself, thus, you know that they're great. Go visit them over at www.tugboatprintshop.com!