Saturday, April 4, 2015

A Lesson in Print Making

Printmaking with traditional methods is such an adventure.  You work and work on cutting the block and you are always guessing how it is going to work out.  Then once in a while, it turns out nice and you are surprised.

Printmaking in a corner of my studio
I cut my first print in high school in 1973 and the adventure is still there.  Today in my little corner of the basement I pulled out a favorite that I designed a couple of years ago and printed a few of "Somber Bay Lighthouse."  

If I learned one thing today it was a lesson in patience.  I knew that a few of the prints I made would be rejects- I seem to reject a lot of product but I want my friends to receive beautiful prints, not smudgy goofy things.  I found that I had to take my time and expect to print either fewer pictures or take longer to do them. 
Reject prints.

As I slowly brought each piece of paper up I studied the image and sometimes held it half way off the block and rolled a little more ink to a spot and pressed the paper back down again to get a clearer image.  Taking my time proved to be the secret to getting a good image. 

I did reject quite a few but came out with about ten I was really happy with. I will put them on mat board and sell them for $49.00 each or frame them and sell for $99.00 each. 

Somber Bay Lighthouse, a numbered print.

(c) Adron