Let's Have Fun, Guy!

The first print of 2017 is well underway and following close on the heels of this accomplishment is the first problem of 2017! But it was easily resolved and I'm back at it.

First, the print is a redo of a print I first began back in 2014, then tackled a couple more times. This was the last one:

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't quite what I'd wanted. It had some whimsy, and I liked the cartoony nature of it. But I felt I could have done better -- I was using lousy birch plywood, and I don't think I'd yet learned to properly sharpen my knives. Additionally, as evidenced here, I was still a long way from finding the cure for the ink problems I was having. The entire background should have been deep black, but the ink pulled back into tiny pools on the print after pulling it from the block.

All of those problems are gone now, and here is the print with two colors:

You can see the contrast really well between the light and dark colors of the mushroom. I was very, very happy with this. I hung the prints up to dry. The next morning, I went to do my next color and found this:

I photographed this so that you could still see the image, but in straight light, it looked like a brown square. The ink had dried to almost the exact color of the first color. Anyone who has painted a room or furniture knows this effect. As an ink tech for a printing company, I was extremely surprised, as I have never witnessed this with ink. I don't do a lot of tones, so it's not a huge problem, but it sure was disappointing. Luckily, I was able to print over this with a lighter version, and it looked awesome. 

Pink-A-Boo

This new print, which I first attempted last fall, is coming along nicely thanks to the education I got over the weekend regarding the limitations of my press. Here are the first two states, a pink and an orange.

The first color is the pink, and it illustrates very well the amount of work that goes into a reduction print. In reduction printing, you print a color and then carve away areas that you want to show as that color in the final print.


 For example, the pink is in four very small spots (in the picture at right, you can see them at the bottom center, under the white cut lines), but I needed to print the entire page pink. Then, after cutting the areas I want to stay pink, I printed the orange. These photos may not be strong enough to show where the pink does show. I could have printed the orange first, then printed the small pink areas somewhere down the road. However, I needed the pink to be as vibrant as I could make it, so I chose to print that first. Even so, the orange itself is only a small are of the print. However, the bulk of the print will be browns and tans, maybe a dark green if I'm feeling frisky. I couldn't print those first and expect the orange to be bright.