William H. Hays is a printmaker who works in linocut and woodblock color printmaking methods. These involve either multiple blocks or a reduction process, in which additional areas of the block are cut away for each successive application of color.

There is a blog post on his website that describes his process, and a short video on YouTube with a step-through of stages.

The reduction process process involves a good deal of forethought and planning, as each color must interact with those that have been laid down in previous passes through the press. He uses both high and low chroma passages to give his pieces both visual drama and reflective subtlety.

His subjects are landscapes, and his process encourages him to refine the landscape elements into discrete areas of color and tone which interlock with other areas to produce a harmonious whole.

Oleg Denisenko is a Ukrainian printmaker, painter, calligrapher and sculptor who I first featured in 2007, and again in 2012.

His wonderfully eccentric subjects center on figures with elaborate costumes, intricately detailed an accompanied by a range of curious objects. He plays with proportion and scale and varying degrees of exaggeration.

Denisenko appears to vary the color of his printing inks an papers and also works in full color at times.

He shares a website called Antiqvitas Nova with his father, filmmaker Alexander Denisenko (in which they spell their name Denysenko with a “y”, though it’s listed in multiple other sources with the spelling I’m using here).

For more, see my previous two posts on Oleg Denisenko (linked below).

Many people are aware of the graphic work of Dutch printmaker M.C. Escher that bends logic and presents mind-boggling visions of impossible worlds and structures. Fewer have seen many of his earlier works, that are much more straightforward and “possible” (if sometimes fanciful).

Here are a few examples.

For more images and info, see my previous posts on M.C. Escher.