Studio Redux

Well.

You may recall that back in September I delightedly moved my printmaking operations to an out-of-house, dedicated studio. I really enjoyed having a space to go to that was entirely about making prints, but there were some less than ideal aspects to the situation. The first was that to get to Studio V required navigation of a long (26 steps and 2 landings) stairway, which meant I couldn't get things like my flat files up to the work space. (Presszilla* was out of the question.) Most of my reference books and sketchbooks and my drawing table also stayed home (where I continued to work on illustration projects)... so "poking around" developing new prints couldn't really happen at Studio V. I had to arrive at the studio with a plan, and once the plan was accomplished, head back home again. Finished prints had to be carried home to store... Not so efficient.

There were other details that weren't working out, either (let's just say the building didn't have the right vibe), so in the end I decided to bring everything back to the home studio. The challenge was to figure out how to integrate the new door-turned-workbench into the old space! After much headscratching and some judicious rearranging space was made and last week the workbench and Elvis came back home.

Things are pretty cramped in here, but I'm delighted to discover that the time spent working elsewhere help me develop a new system for working here. The priorities for this space have changed... An 80-inch-long workbench demands that the bulk of the room is now focused on printmaking, but there's still just enough space for illustration and design and the administrative tasks that have to be done here. I'd still like to have a dedicated studio that's not in the house, but it needs to be the right space. The greatest thing about the last few months in Studio V is that I learned more about what the right space should be.

I've already done some printing here, tweaking the space as I go. You can see in the image above that there's something big happening, but I'm not ready to share it just yet. I did pull a number of just-for-fun prints that I'll post later this week... There's a little celebration about to happen!

(*Presszilla still isn't here, but I think we've worked out a plan for her that will benefit more than just me. Details as they become available.)

Another tool for the Plan B arsenal

During the process of working a reduction block I frequently make "mistakes" that cause me to rethink my next steps for carving and printing. Most are small and they're either not critical or they're solvable through subsequent ink passes. Every once in a while, though, I make a mistake on the LAST pass... and that takes a bit more headscratching.

A few days ago I printed what I expected would be my second-to-last color on this autumn landscape linocut. I wanted a little more interest in the middle-ground dark trees than just a flat color, so I thought a few highlights would do the trick.

So far, so good.

But for some reason I just couldn't wrap my head around how to make the sort of marks I wanted for the highlights, so when I started printing the final color it just looked too spotty and busy. The marks were too similar to those in the background.

Okay, I thought. I'll just join some shapes together and vary them more and it will be fine. So I carved some more and printed again.

Ick.

These shapes seemed overbearing, and rather than bring dimension to the trees, they seemed to flatten out. What the heck?

And then I realized what the problem was. The trunk of the second-from-left tree had been cut out at the wrong step... and the background green was showing through the middle of the tree instead of the highlight color. Damn.

There are ways to fix these things. It's possible, for example, to "pounce" color over an area with a brush and stencil (a technique called pochoir)... but I'm not experienced with pochoir, and the idea of having to do that over an obvious area in the entire edition with unknown results was not appealing.

This looked like a job for wood filler.

I've never used wood filler to repair a block, so this also seemed a bit risky, but I figured I could always carve it back out again if it didn't work and try something else.

Who knew there were so many kinds of wood filler? I stood in front of the shelf at our local hardware store for a longer period of time than I expected, and finally settled on this small tube of Elmer's brand "Carpenter's Wood Filler." I applied several "mooshings" of filler in the cracks... each time it dried it shrank (shrunk?) a little.

Then I sanded it smooth. The patch still seemed a bit shallow at this point, but I am not a patient person so I decided to go ahead and print anyway. I did recarve one spot that had gotten filled in during my overzealous application of goo.

Well, whaddaya know? It worked. Probably would have worked better if I had applied filler one more time-- I had to rub a little harder on the patched spots to get good ink transfer because they were just a skosh lower than the rest of the block surface-- but in general it worked out just fine. It's not a technique I intend to employ on a regular basis, but it's good to have in the arsenal of back-up plans.

Fieldwork Frogday. With penguins. And cabbage.

Trips out of "our" valley seem to happen in clusters. I might not get more than a few blocks beyond the house for weeks at a time, and then suddenly I feel as though I'm hardly ever home. Last week I accompanied the DM to his gig in Manitou Springs for the first time since September or October, and this week I tagged along again for two more days of gigs in the same area. I expect to make the trip again in a couple of weeks...

You would be right in thinking I have plenty of opportunities to listen to David play here at home, but those opportunities aren't typically within a 30-minute drive of tigers and gorillas and lizards, and I've been really jonesin' to draw more critters lately.

So while we were down in the city (again) I tucked my sketchbook under my arm and toddled off to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo (again), where I drew bullfrogs and penguins (again). The bullfrogs and penguins (and hippos and komodo dragons) are housed in the same building, and I usually end up there because it's a facility with decent light and workable vantage points from which to draw. I admit it: Some days I like my "field"work with a dash of comfort.

The advantage to being in the building on this particular day was that we got to watch the hippos enjoy an afternoon snack. By which I mean a keeper placed an entire (large) head of cabbage in each open hippo mouth. Kerrr-UNCH! Who knew that cabbage could make such a satisfying noise?

This morning we're home again and I got back to work on the landscape linocut. The second-to-last color went down just fine and then... oops. Problems.

Stay tuned for the resolution, but until then I wish everyone a week like cabbage in a hippo's mouth: Something to really sink your teeth into.

And a little bit more...

There are plenty of days, or even moments throughout days, when I question my efforts as a printmaker. Maybe I should be pursuing some other career...

But then I put a blended roll of blue and green inks on a block and doubt just melts away. Seriously. Would someone who wasn't a printmaker feel a chill up their spine when confronted with this? I kinda doubt it.

Autumn landscape linocut progress

Printing continues to be slow in the new year, although I now have two larger linocuts mounted and drawn and ready to start carving. A batch of "white" Awagami Kozo arrived two days ago and yesterday I trimmed it down to size for the 12 x 18-inch block that's next in the queue. I'm excited to start it, but also a little bit nervous.

In the meantime, I've been working in fits and starts on this small landscape. The last time you saw it it had just the blue sky and tiny violet hillside in place, but a fair amount has happened since then. Naturally I kept forgetting to take the camera to the studio, so two steps are undocumented. So far it's gone like this:

1) Blue (stenciled)
2) Violet (stenciled)
3) Transparent yellow (no photo)
4) Deeper yellow (still no photo)

5) Green-to-ochre blend (above)

6) Deeper ochre on only the lower half (lousy photo).

This edition is being printed on the "natural" color Awagami Kozo, and I'm trying to maintain only moderate pressure on the baren as I print each color. This means the texture of the paper is a little more pronounced, but I'm hoping it also means the colors will remain more luminous. Fingers crossed. Well, not really. It's too difficult to carve and print that way.

Linotype: the film

Sometimes you just need a little film about "obsolete" printing technology to get your day off to a great start.


"Linotype: The Film" Official Trailer from Linotype: The Film on Vimeo.

One more example of how I was born several decades too late. I did typesetting on another now-obsolete machine, but it wasn't nearly as fun as a Linotype.

So far the screening schedule for this film seems confined to the coasts. Seriously? That can't be right.

Fieldwork Friday- no, Saturday: Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

Birds at the Rift Valley area. The kori bustard kept me giggling...
About once every five minutes it would pass my side of the
exhibit yard, usually at a run and ALWAYS with
the intention of tormenting all the egrets and guineafowl
who were trying desperately to mind their own business.

The DM had a gig in Manitou Springs last night and I decided I would tag along. It's (almost) always nice to hang out whilst David's playing music somewhere, and it's extra nice to see the friends we stay with when we travel, but I had an ulterior motive for a journey to the city. I wanted to go draw some critters at the zoo this morning.

The weather has been ridiculously fine for January, so I was a little worried that hordes of other folks would want to be at the zoo on a Saturday, too. (I almost NEVER go to such places on weekends, especially if I want to draw.) It was busy, but not horribly so, and I managed a few decent sketches. Mostly I had pages of drivel... starts and starts and starts that went nowhere, but it felt great to move a pencil around.

Boreal toads and a sleeping pot-bellied pig named "AL-ouicious".

Well, THIS is better...

Happiness is a drying rack of new prints-in-progress.

We're still feeling a bit sub-par here in the Heart of the Rockies, but both the DM and I have gone enough stir crazy to send us back to our respective studios, coughing and sneezing be damned. David's working madly on a new CD, and I have finally started some new relief prints.

Last weekend I mounted two largeish blocks, one 12 x 18 and the other 12 x 16, for some ambitious linocuts. I'm still waiting on the arrival of new paper, however, so although I'm twitchy to get one of them underway I'm stalled for at least another week. And sorry... I debated posting a photo of the drawn-up 12 x 18 block but I've decided I'd rather have it be a surprise. You'll just have to wait.

In the meantime, I drew up a smaller block... revisiting an image I tried last year but didn't feel was successful. The first two colors didn't require any carving, so this morning I tore down paper and got to work. Both the blue and the tiny spot of violet were put down using stencils and went quickly. I'm printing on the "natural" color Awagami Kozo again. So far, so good.