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.