Repairs made, work begun!

The studio in coming together. Click image to embiggen.

There are a lot of reasons that I am happy that I moved to Maine, but at the top of my list right now is my new neighbor, Jeff. I shared my woes over my damaged press bed and he came right down to take a look. He felt we could manage a repair ourselves, and since I know him to be very handy (and experienced with construction and countertops), I figured we couldn't make things any worse and should give it a try.

A couple of days and a lot of stinky contact cement later... voila! We got the laminate re-adhered smoothly to the press bed and I am back in business.

There are still a few little quirks that developed in storage... mainly with one of the adjustment screws... but I jumped on in and printed some black-and-white images just to see where things were.

Happiness is linocuts on a drying rack.

Of course just because I haven't been able to print doesn't mean I haven't been working on other things... including the opening of an exhibition at the Green Lion Gallery in Bath.

I was tickled to find my piece, "Wild Dreams" facing the gallery entry door, and two small floral pieces adjoining the work of another local printmaker, Holly Berry. That's Holly in the middle, Martha Truscott on the left and some other slouch printmaker on the right.

Whew! It's suddenly summer time in Maine and things are hopping. Gallery shows, workshops, and field work are all vying for my time... and I'm still trying to get things functional in my living and working spaces. And I've had some company again, too!  It's starting to feel like a more normal sort of craziness, and I'm happy to be in the middle of it.

I'll be prepping some paper and getting started on a small reduction print in the next few days, although I expect to be interrupted by a high school graduation extravaganza and the annual Belfast Ukulele Picnic this weekend. Ukulele? Yes. That's a whole OTHER story.

Trouble in Paradise

Well, I suppose it was a little optimistic to think a move of this magnitude would happen without a few hiccups.

Go ahead, embiggen this image with a click.
Oh, that we could enlarge spaces with a click in real life.

Thursday was the epic last push to get the studio moved in to the new house. With just a small pickup truck and one friend for most of the day it took a couple of trips and several hours to get the flat files disassembled, moved, and reassembled. By the time we had more helpers and were shifting Presston (the press) it was nearly 10pm and very dark.

But we got it done. I untied the cord and fabric we had used to bundle Presston up before the journey, made sure the adjustment screws were loosened, and left him to acclimate to the new space while I went to bed.

Yesterday afternoon I gave Presston a quick dusting and then did a little test-roll of the bed to make sure everything was functioning. I was met with a funny little crunching noise. Uh oh.

Eek! Peeling laminate! No linocuts happening today...

The bed has a plexiglass cover on it, so at first I thought the plexi had warped in storage. (An easy, if not inexpensive fix.) Alas, no. When I pulled up the plexi I discovered that the adhesive holding the laminate top on to the bed had failed along one edge and the laminate is now buckling.

Swearing ensued.

Presston is almost 20 years old, and moving him from a dry climate to a damp one wasn't without risk. It's possible the adhesive would have failed even if we stayed put in Colorado, but it's certainly not a welcome problem.

It looks like the center of the bed might still be smooth enough to work on small prints, which I had anticipated doing while I get used to working in the new space and climate. I don't know if it's possible to re-adhere the laminate or if my best bet will be to try to peel it all up and have a bare-naked metal bed. (But how to get rid of laminate residue?) The Takach mothership has been consulted via email. I'll see what they have to say on Monday. Keep your fingers crossed I don't need a replacement bed.

In the meantime I still have plenty to do to get the space functional, AND I have to frame some work for delivery to a show next week, so it's not like I'm twiddling my thumbs! And despite this bump, I'm still happy with the road I'm on. It feels great to have all my belongings in one place again and to be moving forward, even if it's not as smoothly as I'd like. And hey! The box of tiny prints that was missing all winter has finally turned up! Stand by for the repopulating of website and Etsy stores.

Parting is such sweet sorrow

Longtime readers may remember that a few years back I acquired an old Challenge proof press from friends who were moving out of the country. I named her Presszilla.

I had big plans for her. I was going to clean her up, get her inking assembly working again, and launch into a sideline of artist's books. Sure, I'd have to buy some type. And some book-binding materials. And....

But time went by and I discovered I had neither space nor time to get Presszilla in order. She's been languishing in storage and my guilty feelings have multiplied.

Yesterday, however, she took off on a new adventure. She's on her way to a new home with folks in Virginia who will love and cherish her. Fare thee well, Presszilla! I can't wait to see what rolls off your press bed.

Proof Press for Sale: Rehoming Presszilla

Ah, Presszilla. You might remember when she came in to my sphere, or you might not. It WAS four years ago, after all. You can see her arrival here.

Sadly, Presszilla and I have never been able to develop a relationship. When she arrived I had no space for her so she went into storage. Some time later life got complicated and I no longer even had a space for myself, so she moved from one storage location to another. Once Presston came on the scene it became clear that I wouldn't have time or space for her for a long while... so reluctantly I need to find her a new home.

As a hand-operated press she's perfectly functional, although a bit dusty from a long time in storage. I do have the inking assembly and motor for her, although they were disconnected long ago and at present the rollers are missing. Turning her back in to a production letter press machine will take a little bit of elbow grease, and possibly the machining of new rollers if her old ones don't turn up. (Someone local had them at one time, and I'm trying to track them down.)

She's here in Salida, Colorado at present, so probably not a candidate for international relocation. But if you've always wanted a proof press... and maybe a project... and little road trip to south central Colorado...send me an email (sy (AT) sherrieyork.com) and we can chat.

Challenge Proof Press - Series K, front view

Paper hood, inking roller assembly, and motor

Inking roller assembly and motor, from the top

Press, back view

Linocut in Progress: Entering the ugly duckling phase

Carrying on with my first piece on the new press, I've realized that I should have given a little more thought to what to do if the process actually worked. I assumed it would take me a little longer to sort out this temporary registration system than it did, and now I'm seven passes in with no particular plan about where it's all going.

Oh, well. Some things never change.

I had errands to do yesterday, so the prints had a day of rest. I had two ideas about the next step, neither of which I pursued. Instead I printed one more brownish tone.

Sparrow linocut, Step 6

Most of this will get covered up, but I wanted to add a little subtlety to the face and underparts of the bird. Mission accomplished.

When everything seems to be working so nicely it's hard to head into the "ugly duckling" stages that often follow. From here I need to start working the background before the darkest bits are added to the bird, which means all the lovely harmonious tone is about to get disrupted.

Sparrow linocut, Step 7

Rather than continue to emerge, our little bird is now pushed back in to oblivion. But I shall endeavor to a) remain calm and b) try to figure out where to go from here. I started carving a few shapes in to the lower portion of the image and am somewhat regretting that decision, but I'm committed to it now.

There's another small hiccup in the forward motion department. For probably the last ten years I have used Daniel Smith oil-based relief inks exclusively, and DS has announced that they will only sell paint from now on. By the time they made the news public some colors of ink, most notably white, were already sold out. And as of today, I'm out of white, too.

A printmaking colleague has recommended the Handschy (now Hanco) opaque white, which I have on order, but which hasn't yet arrived. I think I should be able to move forward without it, but it's one more "new" variable to add to the learning process. Yippee.

In the meantime, expect things to get uglier before they get prettier. But also expect me to continue my happy dance, because I'm having oodles of fun getting to know Presston.

AND, I want to give a shout out to the fine folks at Takach Press, Presston's mothership. I've been using Takach brayers for a couple of years and love them, but before I went out to Nevada to pick up the press I sent ecstatic and probably delirious-sounding emails asking for moving advice. They responded quickly and generously with suggestions and offers for continued help once I got settled.

I have discovered that one of Presston's pressure settings goes out of adjustment more quickly than the other, so late on Saturday night I sent off another email, not expecting to hear anything until the work week began again today.

Nope. At 9:30 on Saturday night I received a detailed message diagnosing the problem and offering clear options for fixing it. Seriously. Presston is 15 years old this month. When was the last time you contacted a company about a 15-year-old piece of equipment and had a response other than "Sorry, we don't support that [model, product, version, software, manufacturer] anymore."? So refreshing. Thank you, Takach, for your professionalism. It is very much appreciated.

Press experiments, Part 3: Or maybe I should just say "Linocut in Progress"

Ask me how much fun I'm having working on the new press. Go on, ask me!

[Insert reader query here.]

I'm having a blast, thanks for asking!

There's not much to report in the technical department this time around, since I've now put down two more colors without mishap. I did start to have a little issue with ink tack towards the end of the 5th color run, but with five colors in two days I'm not surprised. No real problems... I could just feel things getting a little tacky when I pulled prints off the block. Some Setswell would have fixed it right up had I needed to make more prints.

So here's where we are– Color 1: gray, Color 2: gray, Color 3: blue....

Color 4: A sort of pale ochre. The weird texture is an artifact of the photography... a little ink glare and some rogue shadows. I haven't figured out a good set up for photo-taking in the "new" space yet.

First press print in progress, Step 4

Color 5: A light brown for shadows in the ochre-y areas. Again with the funky shadows, sorry. But hey, birders! Any guesses what our species might be?

Linocut in progress, Step 5

Time to think about what's next. There are two small areas of the bird that will require spot inking, and I'm considering some sort of color blend in the background. But which to do first? Always a question in reduction prints!

Press experiments: Registration, Part 2 - Pins and Tabs

Not being able to print when there's a 450-pound wheedling child in your living room is some unique form of torture, I think. Deciding to try a pin-and-tab registration system is one thing. Having to wait for aforementioned pins and tabs to arrive in the post is another thing entirely.

I had just about settled on carving some single-color images so I could at least play with pressure settings and paper when a happy little parcel arrived with today's mail. Hooray!

About a million years ago I worked in a commercial print shop. I set type and did layout via the paste-up method... yes, I am that old. A good friend of mine was our shop stripper, which doesn't mean what you think it means. The stripper took my pasted-up layouts, shot and processed film negatives of them, and then "stripped them up" for exposure to metal lithographic plates. And guess what? He used pins and tabs just like these to do the job.

There are several references to using pin-and-tab systems on the interwebs, this one by Maurice Fykes III is available as a PDF download on the McClain's website. It's a good explanation, but I didn't particularly like the idea of having to secure my lino to bookboard for the entire printing process, mostly because it seemed like clean-up between each color would be a pain in the neck. I also know of instances where printmakers adhere the pins directly on to their lino. This works really well for bleed prints (image goes over the edge of the paper), but I want to find a way to make prints with nice, clean margins.

So.

Enter Registration Experiment #2. I have a mat with an 8 x 10" opening, the size of my unmounted lino block, to which I have adhered the pins. Like this:

The mat should have been wider so the tabs would fall farther from the top of the block and give me a wider paper margin, but for the purposes of this experiment it will be fine.
Once the pins were stuck to the mat board (with clear shipping tape, nice and strong), I started attaching tabs to paper. This is a little tedious, but not horribly so.

Once I had twelve sheets of paper taped up I was ready to print. I started over with a whole new block and all new paper, just to make things easier on myself.

So imagine, if you will, going back and printing the two steps I showed you the other day all over again. And then imagine my initial dismay when my first attempt to print the second color with this new system FAILED. Ugh! Seriously? Is this not going to work?

But I stayed calm and tried the next sheet. Perfect. And the next one? Perfect. In fact that first sheet was the only one that gave me problems, so I suspect some wretched pilot error on that one. Second color a success, so on to the third!

Great. All of these worked, no problem, so I think I'll give colors 4 and 5 a go tomorrow if I can.

The matboard jig is okay, but I don't think it's a long term solution. The board will wear down and eventually the block won't sit as squarely. I'm used to the feel of particle-board-mounted-lino against pine, but don't really want to continue with the thickness that I've been using for handprinting.

Luckily the carpenter at the local lumber yard is accustomed to my odd requests and will happily let me dig around in his scrap pile until an alternate idea presents itself. There are lots of ways to do this, and I just need to find the one that suits me best.

First tests on the new press!

FINALLY I got to spend some time mucking around with Presston this afternoon! Presston, if you haven't been following along, is a 30 x 60 Takach etching press, acquired just last week.

Up to this point I've been printing my linocuts entirely by hand-rubbing with a baren and spoon. I've got a reliable system down and I enjoy fairly consistent results. But in the last year I've started to have some rather serious pain in my wrists and neck from all this repetitive motion and pressure, so it was time to do something different. Serendipity brought Presston and I together, and now it's time to get to know each other better.

To be honest, I've been a bit nervous to start. I've only made two small reduction relief prints on an etching press before and I don't really know what I'm doing. What if, after all this effort and expense, I find I can't make it work for me?

But this afternoon I finally quit stalling (and finally got far enough along in an illustration job that I don't feel guilty walking away from it for a bit), and made my first foray into press-assisted print.

Ooooh. Fun.

I was delighted to find it really easy to get the roller calibrated, and even more delighted to find both sides completely synchronous.

I considered starting with a single color print, and that probably would have been smart... but I was more excited to print than carve, so went ahead and jumped on in to a reduction piece. It was a good and not-so-good decision.

The good news is that my very first pull was perfect!  Even ink, correct pressure, beautiful impression. The press bed has a nice grid and guides on it, so I thought I'd just try to tape off some registration marks and eyeball it. Why not? I pulled 20 lovely first colors in pretty short order.

You might be able to see a ghost of the drawing here... something I didn't anticipate but can correct in subsequent prints. I draw my images on the block with a Sharpie permanent marker, and usually when hand-rubbing I have very little transfer of Sharpie to the print. With Presston's firm hand I had lots of transfer, but in the future I think that if I draw the image and sand it down a bit before inking it should help.

Encouraged by this initial success I thought I'd go ahead and try out my seat-of-the-pants registration system.

THIS is going to need more thought.

I pulled 8 prints and only got one in good alignment, so clearly I need a more thoughtful registration method. I have another 12 first color prints on the rack, but I'm undecided about carrying on until I can sort out something a little more efficient. I think I'd like to try a pin system, but I haven't ever used one and don't quite know how to set it up. But I'll figure it out! I'm really excited about the possibilities once I get a new routine in place.

So time out for some more research. This first experiment was with unmounted lino, which I think will eventually be the mainstay. But my hand-rubbing registration jig requires mounted blocks, and I have a goodly pile of them that will need to be used at some point. (Plus I have some large single-color images on mounted blocks that I never finished editioning because I needed to give my wrists a break. Presston will make short order of them once I get a system in place.)

It felt really good to work in my "new" space today... so far the set up seems completely functional. As always, I wish I had more horizontal work space, but one does what one can in the space available. A sign of how much fun I was having? I totally forgot to stop and eat dinner.

Stay tuned for future experiments.

The Epic of Presston

Mission accomplished! After an epic journey that despite flawless execution somehow took two days longer than expected, Presston is settled in his new home.

I had intended to take loads of photos, but there are only so many view-out-the-front-of-the-moving-truck shots that one can tolerate. My picture-taking started out well enough:

I so rarely fly west, it was a surprise to find myself over
my own valley. That's Twin Lakes and the Forebay
in the center, and I think the controlled burn at O'Haver Lake
in the background. And yeah. Snow.

My intrepid companion in adventure and I left Salida at oh-dark-hundred last Monday and drove to Woodland Park to leave my car and catch a ride to the Denver airport. From Denver we took a bare bones flight to Las Vegas ($57!), where we were met by the indomitable Suzanne Hackett-Morgan of the Goldwell Open Air Museum.

Suzanne and the Barbie Jeep drove us to Pahrump, Nevada to pick up a very large rental truck, and then we were off in to the Mohave desert to collect Presston and some other equipment. At this point I think G started to wonder just what he'd agreed to.

The schlepping team: Suzanne, David, Greg, oh SHOOT, 
I forgot his name, Dane, and Richard.

In Beatty Suzanne rounded up some help and we moved Presston, two tables, a cabinet, a drying rack, a hot plate, and other miscellaneous stuff into the truck. This is a far simpler statement than it was an activity. Presston alone weighs over 400 pounds and it was 90 degrees in Beatty... a cooling-off for the locals, but an abrupt return to summer for someone who had just left snowy peaks.

Last light from the Barn, click to embiggen

 But we managed to finish up and to get some other items schlepped out to the Goldwell Barn, just as the last light disappeared from Death Valley.

Suzanne treated us to dinner at the Sourdough Saloon, where we met some local characters and where I found the coolest door latch in a women's restroom in a bar ever. Well, maybe not ever. But certainly in a long time. Not that I spend much time in bars. Or in bathrooms in bars. Oh, nevermind.

We stumbled to bed (from fatigue, not bar offerings), and the next morning saw oh-dark-hundred AGAIN. Gas station coffee and breakfast sandwiches in hand we headed east. It looked like this:

And a little while later, it looked like this:

The good news is that those thin clouds became thicker clouds and we had overcast skies for the next two days of driving. Not so picturesque for photography, but certainly nice and cool for desert travel.

We ended up driving for almost 15 hours on Tuesday, arriving in Albuquerque, New Mexico well after dark and unfortunately also after they closed northbound I-25 for construction. Tired and cranky AND having to find a new route across town in a 16-foot truck? Definitely a trip low point. But we made it, found a place to stay, and were satisfied to only have a 4.5-hour drive the next day.

Wednesday we were in Colorado in time for lunch in Alamosa, and then the final push for home. G and I unloaded the tables and made some decisions about how to set up the living-room-now-studio-space, and then gave up for the day. (I had a plan, but of course it completely changed once we had the actual equipment.) Thursday it rained all day, but we finished sorting equipment and studio, put some items (like a huge drying rack that I can't fit in my space just now) in to storage, and welcomed a cadre of young men from the Salida High School cross-country team to help schlep Presston into place. (The scariest moment for me.)

Definitely NOT the hot, dry Mohave. Headed to Colorado Springs
for the last steps of the journey.

We were not quite finished yet, though. Yesterday (Friday) I had to pick up my car on the way to returning the truck in Colorado Springs and a piece of equipment that we brought with us for Colorado College had to be delivered. And of course I had to go cheer for the cross country team at their District meet in Cañon City on the way home. I owed them that, at least.

So now it's Saturday, and although there are still some shelves to install and some lighting to sort out, the studio space is looking good. Presston dominates the scene, of course, as he should.

click to embiggen these funky phone-camera panoramas

Presston!

For me the rest of today will be about post-trip bookkeeping, email triage, and a desperate trip to the grocery store. (And probably a nap.) But from time to time I'll get up and wander to the studio... find a little more dust to clean off of Presston... and start to find my way to a new working method. It's a new era for this printmaker!

OOPS! I almost forgot to mention that Presston made at least part of his journey on the infamous Route 66. The one photo I have from the trip that isn't from the window of the truck! (It's from the gift shop of our stop for Second Breakfast, but hey...)

The effort before the reward

Sands Lake at sunrise, Salida

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I may not like getting up early in the morning, but I do like being up. A few days ago a friend dragged me out for a walk at dawn, and while I might have grumbled about it I definitely appreciated the chance to experience a morning like the one pictured above.

And now I appreciate it even more, because it gives me a nice metaphor for the current state of life in general: I'm not particularly enjoying the lead-up, but I know I'm going to love the result. Ladies and gentlemen, drum roll please... I have an announcement to make!

I'm getting a Big Girl Press! 

I realize this isn't the first time you've watched me get all twitchy about a press. Back in 2011 I brought Elvis (Press-ley), a Richeson baby press, into the studio. Elvis has his moments, but he's no precision machine and he's limited to prints smaller than 9 x 12 inches.

Then there was Presszilla, a lovely chunk of 1940s-vintage proof press. Unfortunately, for all her handsome steel bulk, Presszilla won't do much larger than 9 x 12, either, and she needs some TLC. Sorry to say she's still living in storage... but one of these days....

So I've continued to hand rub 99% of my prints, and found that my physical limits top out around 12 x 18 inches. In fact these days my physical limits are even more limited: I've developed some rather alarming problems with my wrists and it's been clear for some time that I need to do something different. Plus DANGIT, I want to work larger.

I've been half-seriously shopping around for an etching press... doing the Google thing every once in a while to see what turns up... but nothing has come of it. And really... where would I put it? I've been back to working in my "spare" bedroom and things are tight as it is....blah blah blah.

So went the mental conversation, until a couple of weeks ago when I stumbled quite by accident upon a great deal on a great press. In Nevada. There was a lot of hemming and hawing, mostly about minor details like money and space, but finally with the counsel and support of some really good friends I went ahead and said YES!

Of course that was the easy part. Now I have to rearrange my small apartment to accommodate a 30" x 60" (!!!!) etching press, get myself and a friend to Nevada, rent a truck, and haul the thing home.

The rearranging part started yesterday. This is the mess that used to be my living room but will now be the studio. I'm losing a sofa, but gaining a press. I had considered using this space as the studio when I moved in here just six months ago, but I couldn't figure out how to make it all fit (and the sofa wouldn't get through any door other than the front one).

 Once it was clear that the sofa would have to go, moving my "sitting room" and office to the bedroom was a little easier. It looks huge here in this iPhone-generated panorama photo, but the room is just under 10 x 12 feet. You can not imagine the headscratching that went on trying to fit all these darn bookcases in here. I'd like to find some other cushy reading chair for this room (now that I will be sofa-less), but for the most part it's feeling like it will be a nice, cozy space.

 Needless to say, there's not much printing in the forecast for this week or next. The Big Road Trip will begin next Monday, and in the meantime I need to find a home for the sofa and get the studio space prepped for the arrival of.... PRESSTON!

(PS: I almost forgot! I managed to save ALL of the sunset linos! Whew! Dodged that disaster, I did.)

Meet Presszilla!

She's big, she's heavy, stalwart and strong. I haven't noticed if she has atomic breath (I hope not), but she definitely has some spiny bits that shouldn't be underestimated.

Meet Presszilla. (Challenge Proof Press, K Series)

Presszilla's previous caretakers are headed to new lives south of the border, so she's come to live with her Aunt Sherrie. Well, sort of. At the moment she's living in the garage of her Aunt Susan and Uncle Richard, but some time soon we hope for a consolidation of the family. (Elvis needs to meet his cousin, after all.)

Yesterday Printmaker Extraordinaire, friend, and former Presszilla-keeper Nancy and her husband Mark came to The Garage to help the DM and I reassemble Presszilla and get a tutorial in her operation. A little cleaning, a little lubrication, and we were ready to run some tests.

It was a tad chilly (we had snow on the ground, after all), so we kept it short. I brought an old block from a previous reduction print just to practice with... I learned how to lock a block in to the bed, how to lift the roller and lower it to engage the print. My lino blocks are not quite type-high, so a little fussing will ultimately be in order to get the pressure just right, but once everything's set up it should be great fun to run. (My test prints were rather light, and I didn't get any pix, sorry.)

A few other visitors stopped by during the proceedings and we had a good chuckle about being among "our own kind," which at the moment meant "people who like heavy old industrial machinery." All who saw her agreed that Presszilla is a thing of beauty. All she needs now is for me to make some prints worthy of her.

It's.... another press!

When I added a musician to my household I learned about an ailment common to the breed: GAS, or Gear (or Guitar) Acquisition Syndrome. I've enjoyed rolling my eyes at conversations about mixers and amplifiers and the equipment minutiae typical of musicians. I shake my head and chuckle, "Musicians!"

Which is not to say I don't have my own art gear foibles. I have a zillion daypacks and bags because none is ever perfect for all iterations of travel with sketching gear. I have many tubes of ink and paint, scores of drawing implements, drawers of paper and sketchbooks. But until recently the common feature of all of it has been that I could move it myself. Well, except for the paper storage cabinet... but that's another story.

And then something started happening. Back in February the stork brought me a Richeson Baby Press, now affectionately named Elvis (Press-ley). Elvis weighs about 65 pounds and I can schlep him around a bit, but he's pushing the envelope.

Of course I then needed a steel tool cabinet for Elvis to sit upon, which arrived in April. This I could NOT move by myself, but the DM and I teamed up to haul it up the stairs to Studio V with a modicum of huffing and puffing.

With the move to Studio V it became clear that I needed a new work surface. The solid-core door which is now the table top is also a two-person shift. As is the new stall mat. Rut ro.

But as of this morning I have now officially gone 'round the bend, having taken custody of an old Challenge proof press*. Well, I've taken partial custody of it, as it's in temporary storage in the garage of friends nearby. At several hundred pounds of awkwardness there's no WAY the three strong young men and we two middle-aged printmakers and our significant others could have gotten this thing upstairs to Studio V. So yeah, I'm already hunting for new studio space. (sigh)

Suddenly I'm shaking my head and chuckling not at musicians but at myself... the proud caretaker of a behemoth about which I know nothing and for which I have no permanent home. Printmaker's Gear Acquisition Syndrome? 'Fraid so. But it's a thing of beauty, ain't it?

(*To my surprise, I'm finding it difficult to locate information about this press online. Challenge proof presses were originally supposed to be competition for Vandercook models, but Vandercook won a legal action against Challenge and they stopped manufacturing them. Could be the name "Challenge" will be more appropriate than is comfortable. We'll see.)

A Royal Dog, a Squeaky Beaver, and a home for Elvis

Unusual weeks are the norm around here (if that makes any sense at all), but these past seven days have been really unusual.

The week started with a watercolor illustration project which, I am pleased to report, has been completed and already approved by the client! No, wait. I'm wrong.

It started with a dog.

The DM and I don't have any pets, partly because I'm allergic to everything but goldfish and partly because our schedules are too erratic to allow any sort of stability for critters. But this week we've been sharing our space with our "niece dog," Scooby. Scooby is a labradoodle (labrador-poodle cross), so she's acceptable on the allergy spectrum. And she's a sweet, mild-mannered creature, to boot.

There's been a lot of talk about royalty this week. Auntie says
I'm a Royal Goofball, so they all must be talking about me.

Of course any extra body in the house is disruptive, and it's taken dog and dog-sitters time to get used to each other. But how could you not be entertained by a face like this? (And a Squeaky Beaver. Don't forget the Squeaky Beaver.)

We must drag ourselves out of the hound's orbit, however, and get some work done around here. For me it's been illustrations and other contract projects. For the DM it's been new music videos. In the week ahead, however, I know I'll be twitchy to get back to printing because today Elvis finally got a new home.

The DM is handy as a Dog Entertainer and a Tool Box Assembler.

The arrival of Elvis Press-ley (a Richeson Baby Press) at the end of February unsettled things in the studio in much the same way that Scooby unsettled our household routine. I've been moving Elvis around the studio, looking for an efficient working location and a sturdy work surface. (Scooby's been moving around the house trying to find the perfect napping spot.) My tables are all too low, and I need every bit of horizontal surface I have already. (If you saw the photo of my work surfaces during the course of an illustration project, you'll know what I mean.) Elvis is "portable," but at 65 pounds it's not something I want to be constantly shifting from table to table as I work on other projects. It is possible to buy a press stand, but in my small space every piece of furniture must serve several purposes.

A solution eluded me until a few weeks ago when we were in Colorado Springs. I wandered into the tool area of a department store and there it was! A rolling steel tool chest!

Just the right dimensions! Moveable! With storage drawers! Best of all, it could be delivered (free!) to a small appliance outlet in nearby Poncha Springs, rather than the main store 2 hours away.

This morning we picked it up, and I must say I'm feeling rather smug about this solution. The drawers will hold my tools and inks and even a good number of blocks. Elvis sits smartly on the top at a comfortable height. I can roll it next to a work table or under the print rack or just leave it against the wall where it is. The wheels lock, and I'm going to get a piece of pressboard to fit in the top, both for extra stability and in case I want to bolt the press in place.

I'm excited to give it a run and see how it all works. But at the moment I have to give myself a run to get a towel, because The Dog and The DM just came in from a walk and they look like this: