Think Digital/Act Analog: Pulling Proofs

Good evening everyone, hope the week has treated you well! There are lots of things going on right now and they're all good. The fiance is pretty well settled into the apartment, work is going swimmingly, and my adventures in printmaking are keeping me busy.

If you're interested in keeping up with the updates or to see the sometimes interesting, often weird, and occasionally funny blurbs that comes out of my mind via 140 characters or less, follow me on Twitter: @CaptGam

Now, as promised I want to show you how Think Digital/Act Analog has progressed. Last time I wrote about it, I had finished the preliminary carving and I was just about ready to ink the block and pull some proofs. So I got everything ready and laid out on the table.

Next up is spreading some ink on my plate with a roller called a brayer. I spread it up and down, and left to right,making sure to get it evenly spread. As I roll it out, it starts to make a delightful crackling noise that lets me know that it's ready to put on the block.

Rolling the ink onto the block is easy enough, but it's important to make sure that the ink is evenly spread on all the printing surfaces. There is a lot of non-printing surface on the digital half of the block and unfortunately I didn't manage to get it all carved down far enough, so I got some ink on those surfaces too(which you'll see on the proof). After rolling the ink, it's time for the printing! This design is too large for my small lever press, so I had to hand print it using a baren.

Or since I don't have a nice baren (yet), I hand printed with a wooden spoon. It takes a little time and it can wear the wrist out pretty quick, but using consistent pressure and making sure to rub all the printing surface, hand printing can yield excellent results.

Just not this time... These are good results, but you can see where there needs to be some fine tuning and additional carving. Also, the ink coverage on the analog side needs some work. Not to worry, those edits can be made, and the ink coverage can be improved using different paper, different ink, or additional techniques such as dampening the paper.

Hopefully I'll be able to finish the edits soon and pull a second proof to see about improving that ink coverage. It will be a new experience for me so it may take a little experimenting, but you can count on me figuring it out (and writing about the process here)!

In other news, I'm working on another project as well, but I need your help. Here's the deal, I'm looking to make a series of smaller prints to get some needed experience in the illustration and carving. As far as subject matter goes, I'm taking requests. Tell me what you'd like to see as a print in the comment section here or you can tweet it at me: @CaptGam. If I use your suggestion, I'll send you a copy of the finished print. Let's see what we can make together!

Unless otherwise noted, all work by Wade Ellett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.