Linocut in Progress (!): Getting reacquainted with Presston

Linocut in progress: Do you think it might be a snow scene?

I spent the afternoon getting reacquainted with my press (Presston), but first I spent the morning doing everything I could do to avoid getting reacquainted with my press.

It sounds completely ridiculous, I know. I am a printmaker. I want to make prints. I've been losing sleep over not printing for several months. So WHY did it take all morning to psych myself up to get to work?

Plain and simple fear.  After so long away, would I make a complete and frustrating mess of things? Would I lose hours of time and many dollars of paper trying to find my way? And, scariest of all, would the ongoing trouble with my elbow and wrist prove too painful to even work?

As with most obsessive worrying, it thankfully turned out to be largely overblown. The inking of the first print was uneven, but that is usually the case. I did have a small problem with transfer of my Sharpie drawing from block to print because I forgot to sand and wipe it down before I started, but in general it went surprisingly smoothly. I had to take a lot of breaks to keep my elbow happy, but I have 22 prints hanging from the rack and I feel like myself again.

So now it's back to carving... and obsessing about whether or not I got the lino block aligned correctly for upcoming registration tasks.  Because, you know, obsessive behavior is what printmakers are all about.