Brayers and Barens and Gouges, Oh My!

I had a productive weekend. I didn't accomplish every single goal I had hoped to achieve, but I'm feeling pretty good about everything I did complete. By the time I washed my brayer and hung up my baren on Sunday evening, I left myself in a pretty good place to pick back up when I'm ready to start inking up blocks again. 

Additionally, this past weekend was my first time using my new traditional bamboo wrapped baren. I'm still experimenting with it, but I think it's going to really improve my hand-printing, which I'm doing more and more of here lately. I didn't even use the lever press at all this weekend. Needless to say, my technique is evolving and the baren is definitely a great tool to have in my utility belt.

It also makes a handy shield for Legolas.

On Saturday I reviewed what I hoped to accomplish this weekend, but I quickly discovered that I still needed to print quite a few copies of Athena! I definitely wanted to finish that run before I started anything else, but like I had previously stated, it's time to lay Think Digital/Act Analog to rest. So I started by pulling a proof of that, and while it was drying, I started going through my final Athena run. You may have seen my errors from that experimenting with the new baren on that run in my previous update. These errors make me laugh, because they are really bad, but they're actually really instructive to me. By the end of the day, my arm was exhausted, but I was much better with the tool.

By then, my proof of Think Digital/Act Analog was dry and ready for me to review. As much as I would like to call it done and print it up, there were a few things that I just needed to fix. But now, now I am done... With the block anyway. I did pull a final proof after making those edits, and the block is ready to go, but I don't have any paper large enough to accommodate the block. My largest sheets just barely cover the block and while if it fits, I prints, it just doesn't look very presentable. So, Think Digital/Act Analog is 100% ready to print, I just need to buy some larger paper to make that happen. 

Because the print may look good, but these margins are rubbish!

That was a pretty good place to stop for Saturday evening. I had gone to community yoga that morning, then volunteered for Clarissa's teacher training class to run me through a full series (I am a dutiful fiance), and I followed that up with about six hours of carving, tearing, and hand printing. So I was ready to take it easy, eat a pizza with my lady, then start up again Sunday morning.

Sunday morning arrived, and I drug my booty out of bed. Then I returned to bed with a bowl of Lucky Charms and an episode of Leverage. After both were finished, I put on pants like a normal human being, sharpened up my gouges, and started cutting Tables Turned like it owed me money. 

I am the Wolverine of linocut.

Trimming the lettering took a little more patience than I had expected, but despite a few oddities here and there, I think I managed to get it pretty clean. I didn't get a full run completed- I'm doing a fairly sizable run of this block, by hand, so it may take me awhile. Still I'm off to a nice start, and things are moving right along! 

Tables Turned

This upcoming weekend will be the first weekend in a month that I haven't had the apartment all to myself during the day, so I have no idea how productive I'm going to be; maybe a little, maybe a lot... Either way, I'll let you know as I move along! If you're interested in knowing when new posts are coming out, my archival day job, and/or the experimental art project that is my life I encourage you to follow me on Twitter: @CaptGam. Likewise, if you want to see some of the world through my eyes (sometimes it's exciting, sometimes it's boring), you can follow me on Instagram at http://instagram.com/wdtellett. Either way, don't be shy, hit me up in the comments, tweet at me, send me a telegram or whatever. 

Until next time, I bid you adieu as the bard once wrote; "See you later, alligator."

Unless otherwise noted, all work by Wade Ellett is licensed under a   Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://themisadventuresofwade.blogspot.com.

Mistakes and Outtakes

I had a busy weekend of printing everybody! I got a lot accomplished, I'm feeling good about it, and I can't wait to share the details. But, while I'm still working on that post, I thought I'd tell you about something else...

I pull a lot of prints that aren't quite right. I'm still experimenting with hand-printing and brayer techniques, so I have a lot of prints that I don't end up using because there is bad coverage or random ink on a spot that I didn't trim enough. These things are normal when you're still experimenting. I can still look at those prints and see a lot of good in them alongside the room for improvement... And then there are the bad prints. They're not a little off, or not quite right. They're just bad. It's because I'm human and do dumb things sometimes. Luckily there are fewer of these than there are prints that are just "not quite right" but still, I often feel bad just throwing them away. And so, I'm going to share a few really bad pulls from when I was working on Athena. I hope you get a laugh or two out of them.

So, these are some of my screw-ups. We might as well laugh at them, because things don't always work out right. I'm not a master printer yet, so I don't beat myself up when a print doesn't come out right. I try to figure out why it isn't working the way I thought it would, and instead of berating myself, I work the problem. I'm learning along the way, and when things get a little frustrating, I laugh at the weird stuff that comes into my head, like a ghost owl with a solid belly (try reading that caption in a high pitched voice- it makes me giggle). So if anybody is having trouble with something, don't be too hard on yourself. Try to solve the problem, and when it's starting to make you see red, have a good laugh. Hell, come laugh at my crappy owls up there if it helps. Just keep at it, and eventually, it'll all work out.

Hit me up on Twitter (@CaptGam) or down in the comments section, and I'll throw another one of these updates your way soon. Thanks for reading everybody!

Unless otherwise noted, all work by Wade Ellett is licensed under a

  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://themisadventuresofwade.blogspot.com. 

Let's Get Inky Everybody

Welcome back friends, neighbors, and people who maybe just wandered around the internet until they stumbled onto my blog. I hope you're having a great week. Mine was pretty solid. I went to an awesome gallery talk at the Figge Art Museum last night. The exhibition is Landscape by Ingalena Klenell and Beth Lipman. It lives up to its name as the exhibition turned an entire gallery into a landscape made entirely out of glass. It's absolutely amazing, like walking into a fantasy world. The exhibition runs until May 25th, so if you're in the Quad Cities Area, you should probably go check that out.

Despite the week going fairly well, I'm feeling a little restless as of late. Penned in, so to speak. Life is good, but I guess I can't help but feel a little caged by the day job, the car payment, the rent, etc. There is a part of me that wants to just pack up and roll out and see what's happening in whatever city is just down the road... But, I know that isn't realistic. Or responsible. Or other "R" words that I can't be bothered to think about right now. So, since I won't be packing up the car and taking the printshop on the road, I will channel my cabin-fever into making things. So what is on our creative to-do list?

Well, let's start with Think Digital/Act Analog.

Listen guys, I love this design. I think it's awesome. It looks cool, and the message is pretty on point as far as I'm concerned. So yeah, I love this design. But, it also haunts me because I have yet to complete it. It follows me around, mockingly. So, I am finishing it this weekend. I am making the last changes to the block that will ever be made. It may not be perfect after that, but at this point, I may be letting "perfect" be the enemy of "good." I have easily put 40 hours of effort into this block, so it's time to pull prints and be done with it! No more hauntings.

Next up on my list is Tables Turned. This is another design that has been floating around for awhile now in several incarnations. I pulled some proofs at the beginning of the week, and they look pretty good. 

I haven't put nearly as many hours into it as I have Think Digital/Act Analog, but the edits that I need to make on it are pretty minimal that it seems ridiculous not to make those cuts and pull some finished prints. So this is on my list for the weekend too! If I'm particularly efficient, I may get a full run printed before I'm back to work on Monday!

What else can we work on this weekend? Well, there's always In Con We Trust. You may remember it, from the print that I pulled before. 

But it wasn't ready. I've thought about lots of different ways to edit the block to get the appearance that I want. Ultimately, however, I decided that I need to take it back to the beginning and cut a new block, making some design changes along the way. 

It still needs a little work, but the new design is going to give a more uniform look to the overall image, and should result in a really good print. But first, I need to hammer out a few more details on the design and transfer it to a block. I'll be pretty happy (and incredibly impressed with myself) if I get this done over the weekend!

One of the other designs I have in the mix is of my old cat Luna. She was my best little beastie buddy for 18 years and I miss the little scrappy ball of fur. And thanks to a suggestion from my lovely fiance, I've decided to memorialize my old beast in a new print, based on a panel from my old web-comic. 

I've been working on a design that will do my old buddy justice, but I'll admit that the drawing is giving me a lot of trouble, partly because cats curl up in the strangest ways, and partly because Luna was so white that in all my photos it's hard to distinguish any detail. But for a rough idea of the direction I'm heading with this print, here are some of my early sketches...

There are a few other irons in the fire, but if I manage to get through all of the above this weekend then I should definitely quit while I'm ahead and take a break. I'll let you know how that goes. 

In other news, if you're on Twitter  and you want updates on my printmaking, my day job, any other random stuff that comes my way, and pop-culture references, then please follow me (@CaptGam). I love to interact, so please don't be shy about tweeting at me or hitting up the comments section here. I'm friendly and love to talk about, well, pretty much anything, so I hope to hear from you.

So everybody, keep on keeping on. Enjoy your weekend, and don't be a stranger! 

Unless otherwise noted, all work by Wade Ellett is licensed under a

  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://themisadventuresofwade.blogspot.com. 

Happy Belated Valentine's Day and Many Happy Returns

Happy day after Valentine's day everybody. I hope that every one's weekend is off to a great start. I know mine is! After a great Friday at the day job, I came home, and the fiance and I hit a new pizza place in town for our V-Day evening. I've been longing for a really good pizza since moving to the Quad Cities, and this place had exactly what I've been looking for!

It was a pretty great meal, after which we came home, had some Jameson & Gingerale, and watched some Justice League. It may not sound as dramatic or theatrical as one might expect out of me, and you're right... But not to worry, there was also this... 

Our second Valentine's Day together and we're doing pretty damn good if I do say so myself. And we didn't have to do homework this year, which is always a plus.

Today, she's off to yoga teacher training, and I'm here working on prints. I'm making progress on the final edits on Think Digital/Act Analog, which is moving slowly, but slow progress is lasting progress. Hopefully I can finalize the block very soon. I'm also working on the next design, which has already gone through several incarnations, but is now titled Tables Turned...

And so you can get a better idea of how it will look when it's done, I've flipped the photo since the block is a negative of the finished print. So, this is a more accurate depiction of what you'll see in the final print. I'm also working on the new transfer for In Con We Trust, so hopefully in the next couple of weeks I'll have a finished product to show.

If you'd like to know when an update is coming out, or would be interested in the random tidbits coming our of my mind, I invite you to follow me on twitter @CaptGam. Don't hesitate to tweet at me with any questions, comments, or witty banter. You can also leave any of those interactions in the comments too. I'd love to hear from you. 

Hope your weekend is going swimmingly! Stay warm, wherever you are, and I'll see you next time!

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

It Takes a Printmaker to Make a Good Impression

Welcome back! Those of you who follow me on Twitter (@CaptGam) knew this post was coming, and you knew that, as I had hoped, I had a rather productive weekend. While it looked like this outside...

I stayed in the apartment, did a lot of printing and made some good forward progress (I also discovered that Leverage is on Netflix, and celebrated the return of The Walking Dead). The end result; Prints everywhere.

So where am I now? Well, I finished my run of Take My Love, Take My Land. I am still trimming down the excess paper and editioning them, but barring any complications, I can safely retire the block. 

I also pulled a lot of prints of Athena, my owl print. The lever press did a really poor job on this piece, and I'm not exactly sure why. It's going to take some more investigation and experimentation to ascertain the cause of the incredibly poor ink coverage. But, having just described the importance of embracing limitations, I decided to put the press to the side and hand print the run with a baren. This took a bit more effort (okay, a lot! my arm is still sore), but I just can't argue with the results. I am going to have to review these prints, but I may have completed a full run of this print as well.

So I got a pretty decent chunk of work done this weekend. Take My Love, Take My Land, Athena, and of course, the long promised re-print of Think Digital/Act Analog.

Alas, this is not a final proof. I spotted a few places I need to make edits, and I just can't call it quits until it's as good as I can make it. I printed this by hand using the baren as well- this design is too big for the lever press- but that works out very well. The lines end up much more precise and the ink coverage is much more consistent. I'm pleased with how it's come along but I'm looking forward to pulling final prints from it as soon as possible.

In addition to pulling prints, I finalized the design on a couple more ideas, and started work on the new transfer for In Con We Trust, so hopefully there will be more exciting stuff to share very soon. Thanks for stopping in and checking out the progress. If you're on Twitter and would like to get some updates on my work (as well as random tidbits, tales from my day job, ruminations on pop culture, weird jokes, and really awesome links to check out) I invite you to follow me (@CaptGam) and don't hesitate to tweet at me with any questions, comments, or witty banter. You can also leave any of those interactions in the comments too. I'd love to hear from you. 

See you guys next time.

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

Weekend Plans

Hey everybody, guess what I'm doing this weekend?

I'm assuming that you guessed right; I'm printing. I'm doing a lot of printing. I'm doing so much printing that I will probably taste ink through my fingers. I'm pretty stoked for this.

If you've read my ramblings here lately, then you probably already know that I have a lot of designs in various stages of completion. What I need to do- will do- this weekend, is work with each one of those designs until they're done (or however far I get!). I need to finish the Take My Love, Take My Land run, pull final proofs and do a full run of Athena, pull final proofs and do a full run of Think Digital/Act Analog (which I have had on hold for way too long), and that's only the projects that are ready to get ink. I have four or five other designs in various stages of production as well. Some are familiar to readers, like In Con We Trust, which I pulled a few months ago. While I loved the imagery, I was unsatisfied with the quality and consistency of the print, and so I am going to start over from the transfer and re-carve it. Others haven't made it to the transfer stage, like Octopus's Garden (which you haven't even seen yet). 

As you can see, one of my problems is that I tend to dive into a new idea while I'm still working on an old one, which is often an idea that I dove into whilst working on an even earlier one. I suppose it isn't the worst problem to have from a creative side, but it doesn't make my completion rate very efficient. I'm going to try to rectify that somewhat this weekend, and get some of these designs completed. I keep saying that I have cool stuff in the works, (oh, and I do!) but to get to it, I need to keep moving forward. 

Which can be admittedly difficult following up the day job (which is a fine job, to be sure) at a one bedroom apartment that I share with my fiance (which is a fine situation to be sure). I'm sure that you've noticed that I don't have a studio. I work on a table, and the washing machine is my drying rack. I'm sharing the space with a jewelry maker who does yoga all over the place. None of this is a complaint, mind you; this is exactly where I ought to be right now and I like where I'm at (both literally and figuratively). However, it does speak to the limitations of where I'm working.

Limitations. I recently tweeted about the limitations of my materials and tools. Now I've brought up the limitations of the space in which I work... I've been thinking about limitations a lot here lately. My mentor used to say, "the only limits are self imposed," and I believe this to be true for the most part. After all, the limitations in my schedule could be removed if I left my job, the limitations in my materials and tools could be remedied by replacing them with more expensive items, and the limitations in my space could be dissolved by getting a bigger place or by booting the fiance out (we're speaking strictly hypothetically here, I promise). Sure, there is a financial limitation here that binds all of these things in place to some degree, but if I really wanted to I could work around that. So why don't I just cast these limitations aside?

Because limitations can be enabling. They can empower us. Limitations can be liberating. Look at Haiku for example. The poet is severely limited in what he or she is "allowed" to write. Sure, the easiest thing would be cast aside the limitations of the medium, and just write however one wants, but by staying within the confines of the Haiku, accepting the limitations, and working on their craft, they get better. Twitter is another great example, especially fresh on my mind because I'm working to get better at expressing myself via tweet. It's an incredibly limited social medium; we only get 140 characters to say what we have to say. Yet we all know someone who is a social media mogul who seems to be able to craft intelligent, witty, funny tweets. They also seem to get a load of followers with whom they can share their message. Would they be able to amass such a following without the limitations imposed on them by twitter? I'm sure that many of them could, but undoubtedly they have become better at honing their ideas into skilled writing because of a limitation of 140 characters or less.

So why do I continue to work in my shared one bedroom apartment space, with simple tools and materials, after busy workdays, aside from the financial limitations? Because those limitations are forcing me to focus on the work. Would it be easier to make good prints in a dedicated space? I'm sure it would. Could I more quickly make superior prints with more expensive equipment and materials? I probably could. Would it be easier to churn out more work if I didn't spend eight hours of work every day? Indubitably so. But these limitations are what help me improve. Working my "9 to 5" keeps the bills payed and the art supplies stocked, making sure that I have everything I need to create. It also keeps me balanced and forces me to exercise my mind at other things. Working with good simple tools forces me to rely not on the materials, but the implementation of the designs to produce good work. And sharing the space helps me learn to clear my own head, and focus myself on my work without forgetting that the outside world is there. I won't deny that someday I would like to have my own dedicated studio space, a nice printing press, and a work schedule that I set (though that last one may be a pipe dream). But for now I accept my limitations and will use them as a means to improve, instead of as a crutch to hold me back. I hope you all will do the same in pursuing the things that you love.

Thanks for checking out this most recent update everyone. Hopefully there will be lots of pictures coming in the next post! If you're interested in getting any updates on when new posts are coming out, or if you'd like to read about the experimental art project that is my life via 140 characters or less, follow me on Twitter: @CaptGam. Likewise, if you want to see some of the world through my eyes, you can follow me on Instagram at http://instagram.com/wdtellett.

  

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

I Printed Some Stuff Guys!

Hello and welcome back to my little corner of the world. I've been busy carving and pulling proofs, and I'm pretty pleased with the results I've had. I'm still working on revising Think Digital/Act Analog so I don't have a final print to show you yet! I know that I've had that one hanging for weeks now, but I just can't seem to get it quite right. I'll have the apartment to myself again next weekend while Clarissa is at yoga teacher training so maybe I'll spend my alone time finishing up that particular design. But I'm not making any promises; it's difficult to say what I'll be moved to work on when the time comes!

But what about what I've been working on this week?

Last time I posted, I was working on a little experiment in which I asked my readers/friends/followers to make requests. The goal was to allow me to try some new techniques... The results have been much better than I had expected! First up is a request for an owl print, which I have titled Athena.

There are still a few final edits to make, but I got to experiment using my tools to make cuts instead of relying so much just on using my fine gouges to make outlines (though I did use it to make a lot of fine lines). I also was asked to create a pirate ship. I mentioned last time that this became less of a pirate ship in particular and more into a ship in general. But that's kind of how it goes with me, and designs will evolve as I'm working on them. I'm pleased at how this design has turned out as well, and I have titled it Take My Love, Take My Land (a free print to the first person to comment or tweet at me from where I derived the title!).

I hope you enjoy these designs, but I'd love to hear your opinion (good or bad), and I'm still taking requests! If I ended up using your suggestion for a design, you get a free print! How awesome is that?

There are awesome things in the works, and I'll share them with you as they develop. For now, I'm glad you've stopped by to check out what I'm working on. Tomorrow is Monday, so it's back to the day job, but even a day job doesn't keep me from having my random daily adventures. Trust me, looking at life as an experimental art project does wonders for one's outlook in life!

If you have a request, question, opinion, idea, insult, or anything else you would like to share, you can hit up the comments section or feel free to hit me up on twitter. You can find me under @CaptGam. It's a nifty way to get updates on when a new post gets written, and to just hear the random things that pop into my head about art, work, life, pop-culture, Batman, etc... It's groovy, if you're into that. 

Until next time, thanks for reading this post and looking at my pictures! I hope you all have an excellent week!

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