Husband and wife team of Paul Roden and Valerie Lueth are the artists behind Tugboat Printshop. In their Pittsburg, PA studio they create intricate woodcut prints in limited editions.  They talk about their all-manual, labor intensive art process in an interview on the website, Silverlake Voice:

“Working with our hands gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates, we think, a superior end result.  We value the tradition of the craft and take part in its legacy. Neither of us is very satisfied to be working on a computer screen, and so we choose not to.”

“The bulk of our time working on prints is spent drawing and carving. We trade woodblocks back and forth, first sketching our ideas out in pencil, then defining them in pen for carving. We use sharp handtools (knives, chisels) to carve blocks in low relief. If we are making a multi block print, we will ink the key (first block drawn & carved, usually with the most detail in the print) and print to paper then back to blocks creating a ghost ‘transfer’ to work from as we draw new info on color blocks. When all blocks are carved in full, they are hand-rolled with brayers (using oil based inks) and printed to paper through the press.”

You can follow Tugboat Printshop on Facebook and Instagram. Their prints can be purchased on Etsy.

Images: Courtesy of Tugboat Printshop.