Gamewell Press Blog

Polar Opposites

Because it's cold! Ha!

In my last post, I covered one of two invitation suites I designed this past year, and this post shows the other. As you can see they are, like the title says, pretty different. Carrie & David's is casual and kitschy, and Josephine & Harrison's invitation is much more traditional and elegant. All this design stuff is still fairly new to me, and these two invitation suites were a great experience. If I was designing for myself, the design would not resemble either of these, but I do like them both, and more importantly, each couple loved them. It's nice to know that I can design for an aesthetic besides my own, basically; that I can have a conversation, and properly translate those verbal thoughts into something visual and pleasing to a client.

Once again I used Holyoke Fine Paper in bone, and the font used in this is Bickham Script, which ever since I used it, I now see everywhere. The original idea was to have a script typeface for the majority of the text and the couple's names would be in some sort of caps display face. However it turned out that the script fonts they liked were of the very cursive, very illegible variety, and the juxtaposition of such a scripty script and the display faces I tried just didn't look right. They really didn't want anything 'modern,' and I think any combination of those two types of fonts that actually looked nice was coming across as too modern. So I switched tracks and we settled on Bickham Script, which is plenty swishy and cursivey, yet also readable (which I'm in favor of). Then I added a simple flourish which I modified from a font of ornaments I had, and we incorporated the flourish into the RSVP and later, into the program and place cards etc. (none of which were letterpress printed).

These invitations are the most formal I've done so far, with both inner and outer envelope and tissue paper in front of the invitation. The calligrapher addressed the fronts of both envelopes, and of course I only printed the outer envelope's return address and the RSVP address, not the inner envelope. But I still ordered all the stock and envelopes so it was something I had to take into consideration. For example, I prefer to use square flapped envelopes (because they're easier to print, registration-wise), but Crane's only sells inner & outer envelope combos with pointed flaps. So I adjusted and put on my registration and makeready hat. You'll have to bear with me photo-wise because I lost my camera around the same time I was printing these, and most of my in progress shots we stored on the camera. Very sad - I loved my camera, but my dad kindly gave me an old camera of his, so I'm making do. Anyway I only have a couple shots that aren't the finished product.

I had so much trouble printing these invitations. It was horrible, and as far as I can tell it was completely the platemaker's fault, with the weather contributing. I've been using Owosso for most of my plates, and I've been getting wood-mounted magnesium plates. The idea should be that choosing those plates makes everything simple, especially when I'm pressed for time. For reasons of storage and flexibility, it would make a lot of sense at this point for me to switch over to polymer plates and a boxcar base, but I just haven't had time or interest to devote to making sure my roller height is set properly. Basically I never get it together to do that before a new job comes along, so I have to revert back to wood-mounted magnesium plates. I also have a honeycomb base, so I could in theory get unmounted magnesium plates, but it's kind of difficult to set the toggles properly. I can never get the plate straight on the honeycomb base, which means that the gauge pins have to be set crooked and I can't achieve a consistent lockup or gauge pin setting for any project that involves multiple plates. So I keep using the same thing despite the fact that I haven't been that happy with the plates' quality. The plates Owosso has been sending me have had recurring problems, mostly in the mounting, but I've always been able to make do, and I've never bothered to complain to them once the printed product came out looking lovely.

I actually didn't call them and complain after this job either, which I really should have. The first and perhaps most obvious problem when looking at the finished products is that the stroke on the RSVP cards is significantly thicker that on all the other plates. I know that this is Owosso's error and not my file-making error because I copied and pasted the swirl ornament from the invitation file into the RSVP file. They should look exactly the same and yet they don't. I also went back and looked at the files I sent Owosso, and the specs are exactly the same across all files. I did send the bride a picture of this after I was done proofing the RSVPs, and she claimed not to care (she's a friend), so we went ahead with it. I'm actually getting kind of angry about this all over again, so perhaps I will give them a call. I really don't understand how that happened, but for printers working on a tight schedule, this kind of mistake on the part of a supplier is inexcusable. Yes, I should allow myself more time to do print jobs (something I've been better about lately), but had I sent the plate back to be remade, the delay would have been at least 3-5 days. I think that would have thrown most jobs off schedule.

The other problem with the plates was far more severe and really impeded the printing process, but was caused by a practice I don't necessarily fault Owosso for. Any wood backed plate from Owosso that's over a pretty small size is going to be mounted on multiple pieces of wood. I don't really have a problem with that because I understand that to be made of one piece of wood would be harder to find consistently, more work to cut and therefore more expensive. That said, it is not uncommon for those pieces of wood to be different heights. I'm used to having to put makeready under one section of a plate so that it locks up all at the same height. Honestly I think Owosso could be a little more careful about that, but it's never been more than a minor pain in the ass, so whatever.

I've also noticed that these problems seem to have gotten worse since Owosso  introduced their new plate base. That kind of makes me wonder...but I know many people haven't experienced the problems I have so perhaps I'm just unlucky. There is no way I can afford that base - it's much more expensive than the available polymer bases, but its introduction (if my suspicions about quality are true) could drive me to finally make the switch to polymer. Since both Boxcar and I are in New York state, I'd certainly switch to them over Elum (in CA), and the idea of waiting less time for shipments and paying less than I do now for shipments from Owosso in the mid-west is attractive (as well as less environmentally bad gas-wise). We'll see. If I do switch over to polymer, I can assure you that I will write an excruciatingly long post about setting my roller height! Something to look forward to.

Anyway, all the plates I've received from Owosso have been made of 2 pieces of wood with the grain going the same direction, until Josephine and Harrison's invitation plate. That plate is made of four pieces of wood with the grains of each piece going a different direction, and the plate was only 5x7, so four pieces of wood seems excessive. That plate was different heights from the beginning, but everything might have been okay except that this job coincided with a week and half of the most disgusting rainy humid weather. The city literally felt like a swamp (New Yorkers, this was at the end of September), and the humidity stayed above 85% for days. I couldn't print in those conditions. It just wasn't happening; I ran the window a/c unit in my shop for hours to no avail, and I would ink up, try to print and have to clean up in failure. The paper felt wet and limp, the ink was just acting kind of weird, and the wood blocks that the plates were mounted on went crazy. To set the scene: I had to wait days to print because I really couldn't print until the humidity went down enough that the ink wasn't soupy and the paper didn't feel literally wet. By that time, I was seriously in danger of not getting this project completed on time. I had every piece done except the invitation itself, and although the weather was still bad, the humidity had temporarily gone down enough that I absolutely HAD to print that night.

As you're probably aware, wood shrinks and expands with changes in humidity and barometric pressure. Since my plate was made of four different pieces of wood, with grains running different ways, the high humidity caused each block to expand a different amount and against the others - or at least in tension with each other. The end result was that the magnesium plate was not attached to a flat surface any longer and that different sections of it were different heights. In places, the plate was bowed. Trying to print with it was frustrating in a throw-your-body-on-the-floor-like-a-3-year-old-having-such-a-tantrum-that-she-passes-out kind of way.

Instead of what usually happens (an isolated part of the plate doesn't print clearly because of either problems with impression or inking) the problems were occurring all sorts of random spots all over the plate and it was mostly inking related. I ended up jerry-rigging all sorts of weird makeready. I put some in spots on the back of the plate, and I had to do an underlay on the tympan as well as spot makeready on top of the tympan for individual letters. But the main thing I had to do was tape the rails of the Pearl in different places. Along the rails some areas would have one layer of tape, some would have as many as twelve. I would print between 4-10 invitations and then I'd have to readjust the tape because the compression would change and another area would suddenly need more contact with the rollers while a separate area RIGHT NEXT TO IT would need way less. I honestly still don't understand what exactly was going on. I was just muddling through it, adding and taking away different things and hoping I'd get enough good prints to finish. I think I had 75 pieces of stock that I shouldn't have even used (I had 125 budgeted which included 10-15 for testing and waste) and I used all of those, plus a whole bunch of extra stock that was similar size.

The printing process was really a nightmare, but I did eventually get done, and the finished product did turn out fine, if not perfect. Actually it was one of those things where I thought it looked horrible until like a week later when I was like, oh wait, these look great! I was also briefly convinced that the client's mother was going to hate them and yell at me, but she LOVED them, so that was nice. I'm a little insecure apparently, but it all worked out. Do you guys ever have the problem where the bad experience of the process taints your evaluation of the final product?

Now you printers might be thinking, oh you should check your rollers, or maybe your platen adjustment was off, or maybe your rails really are uneven, and I too had those thoughts, but those are not issues. It really was the plate and not my press and I know this because I have not had a single problem before or since. I've printed with wood mounted magnesium, laser-cut wood plates, and hand-set type, and have not experienced a single problem since then. I've even printed during rain and snow without issue. It was that plate. That plate almost gave me a nervous breakdown, and now that I'm finally writing all this down, I'm wondering if one can still complain 4 months after the fact? I'm also becoming quite resolved in my determination to switch to another system. More on that to follow.

Catching Up

Oh, hiii. How are you? I really hate it when people say they're going to start blogging again and then they don't. I always think it's better to just pretend like nothing unusual happened. C'est la vie. I'll try to remember that next time I abandon my blog - which may be tomorrow - I make no promises.

So I've got big plans for the new year, but I'm not going to talk about them yet because apparently the threat of shame from writing about something and then not doing it is not enough to make me do anything. We'll see how things pan out. In the meantime, I thought I'd catch the blog up on the major happenings from 2010. They won't be in chronological order, probably, but I do feel the need to present the big projects on the blog before moving on. I'm anal that way - I also read magazine articles in order and I can't bring myself to skip around in books of letters or essays.

Anyway, the big projects this year were all wedding invitations. Marriage. It's what brings us together. Let's begin, shall we? I printed three wedding invitation suites this year, and while all very different and unique and speshul, let's first focus on the similarities.

Number one is paper. Behold, for I have found a paper that I like and highly recommend, and it IS NOT Crane's Lettra. Longtime readers with good memories (and apparently nowhere else to go) will perhaps remember that my results with lettra were never all I hoped for. I know that many, many printers and Martha Stewart all swear by it, but I've just always found the quality inconsistent and results lacking. Obviously there are lots of papers that work great with letterpress printing, but my new go-to paper for jobs is Holyoke Fine Papers.

Here's what I like about it: 1. It might even be thicker than lettra, but it certainly feels more supple and cushion-y; 2. I feel like it prints fine lines just as well as lettra and prints everything else (solids, half-tones) better than lettra; 3. The color choices are nice (antique, bone or natural). They're actually pretty similar to lettra, but the Holyoke paper is just more elegant, somehow and the cream one isn't as ugly; 4. They offer both parent sheets and a large variety of cut and folded sizes. This is really the best part. I don't have a good paper cutter, and being able to order 100 5x7 cards is a huge time-saver, headache-saver etc.; 5. Holyoke Paper is part of Manifesto Press, which is a large printing company whose owner Bryan Hutcheson often posts smart-ass remarks to the Letpress listserv. Now I don't always find Bryan's posts amusing, but I prefer to buy from a fellow printer and a smaller, independent business. 6. Super-nice and helpful employees and very fast shipping. They're near Boston, so regular old UPS ground arrives in New York in 2 days or less and I've never had trouble with something not being in stock.

Here's the short list of things I don't like about Holyoke Paper. 1. No envelopes. You can match pretty closely by using various other companies, but it would be really nice to be able to just order envelopes at the same time. I generally use the Bone stock, which is a pretty good match with the Pearl Lettra envelopes. However, I do believe they have plans for envelopes. 2. They don't do custom cutting. Pretty small complaint actually since most paper suppliers not only won't do custom cutting, but also don't offer pre-cut stock, but I needed for there to be more than one item on my con list. 3. Oh, well I suppose if rainbows were made of puppies, it would also be nice if they offered colored stock too.

So I printed all three projects with Holyoke Fine Papers' Bone stock, and the first invitation suite I'm featuring is for Carrie & David's vaguely fifties themed wedding. Carrie and David are wonderfully fun, eclectic people, and their wedding reflected their personalities. The colors they were using included teal, black, and dark orange, but they threw in many other colors in their decorations too. After talking with them, it seemed that the over-arching themes were the fifties (Carrie's dress, the cake, some decorations) and teal (bridesmaids' dresses, the cake), so my design incorporated those. I actually presented them with two other ideas, but they chose these. The invitations are totally fifties inspired and playful - kitschy in the best way, I hope. I really feel that the invitations reflect Carrie's personality really well.

Carrie and David and I all used to live in the same building here in Brooklyn, so to save them some money, we used plates that Glendon cut on the laser cutter. As I've said before, I wouldn't use the plates on projects of people I didn't know (& even many people I do know) because the quality can be kind of difficult to control. You can see that on the RSVP card where the lines are just not as crisp as they should be. Carrie and David didn't care at all, but it of course bugged me. We re-did the plates (and my file) to avail. I actually ended up chiseling off the line next to "must regretfully decline" and printing it separately with rule that I cut to fit.

So that was that. Next time, if there is a next time, I will post on another wedding job and also talk about platemakers. Or maybe I won't.

First Time I Ever

This weekend I was going through some of the piles of random crap that have been lying around ever since the move. It's mostly piles of papers - photocopies, clippings, printouts, notes - and even with all the space I now have, I still have nowhere to put it all. I guess I need a filing cabinet, but I don't have anywhere to put a filing cabinet. Probably I should throw it all away, but the current plan is to scan and toss most of it. It's a long term plan.

Anyway, buried in the pile of crap that had been on the fridge in the old apartment, I found the first thing I ever printed. I guess it had been on the fridge, but I don't remember having seen it for a few years. It was nice to come across it because it's funny to hold a piece of paper in your hands and think that the process of creating this one piece of paper changed my life. Or at least it changed where any extra money and space in my life went.

So the first time I ever printed was this four hour session at a NYC studio that we were required to do for either my History of the Book class or my Rare Book Librarianship class for library school, I don't remember which. But all of us had to sign up for a time slot on a weekend afternoon or morning, and I picked a time that was convenient, not a time with people I was friendly with. When I showed up I found that my time was shared with this irritating woman who talked non-stop about her wedding for four hours (I believe she actually got the studio to print her invites later) and the most disliked student in all of library school. Literally, this student was horrible; everyone hated her. I'd often go out for drinks with people from classes and there would always be about five minutes of complaining about this woman or bragging that one didn't have any classes with her this semester. So this is my group for our letterpress printing workshop, the instructor and I did not hit it off, and I still loved it.

We were supposed to bring it a short quote or something that we might want to print, and then the three of us looked at our quotes and picked one. Thankfully we picked mine, and then I was able to talk them into a sanserif face to go with the quote (that concept went right over the heads of at least one of them). We each handset two lines using our little printouts of the California case, and then we had the option to add an illustration or ornament. It was at this point that I was completely outvoted and they chose this inappropriate and random "T" to plop down to the left of the quote. The instructor totally judged us for that (she was like that - and hell, I did too), locked it up for us, inked up the press, etc. while explaining what she was doing. Then we each printed a couple of them, redistributed the type and went home.

Not beautiful to look at, and not a piece I even particularly like, but when I finished that class that day, I was bouncing off the walls with excitement. I went out and signed up for the next more in-depth class that had room, and here we are today.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Okay, the title is a gross exaggeration since I certainly hope to print CD packaging again, but I've learned some valuable lessons in what not to do next time and I'm enjoying my DFW shoutout. Basically everything that could go wrong did, including getting this post out - I've been looking for parts of this to photograph for 2 weeks now! All in all I think the finished product is swell, especially for a first time effort.

So many, many months ago now I printed CD packages for my friend Matt Schickele's newest album. We used arigato packs from Stumptown printers because Matt already knew he wanted to use recycled stock and he didn't want to have to deal with glue or anything too tricky. We looked around for comparison's sake, but Stumptown really seemed like the cheapest, best option for what we wanted. Matt is also responsible for the design, and I think the finished design is the 3rd draft of us going back and forth on what would and wouldn't work for letterpress printing. His first design included a dark green wash over the entire cover, so that was obviously problematic for letterpress. I do believe I'm getting better at explaining to clients what does or doesn't work for letterpress printing, and I told Matt the likely result of trying to print that large a solid and then sent him images of other peoples' results doing that on similar and stronger presses.

Since we were trying to keep costs down it needed to be printed on the Pearl and not a design for which I'd have to rent time on a Vandercook. Another part of my cost saving measures was convincing Glendon to do the blocks for me on the laser cutter. Honestly, this is where the majority of problems came from, and with non-friend and non-flexible clients, I will be purchasing plates in the future and prices will just have to be higher. There were a couple problems caused by having the blocks made on the laser cutter, but the simplest one is that Glendon really didn't have time to do this. I'm not sure if he was just too accommodating to say no to me, or if he just didn't realize how busy both he and the laser cutter would be. Neither of us realized how time consuming these particular plates would be - or how many times we'd have to re-do them! Naturally, once word got around his department of what the laser cutter could do, people started lining up to have their projects printed, so there isn't tons of downtime for my personal jobs during official hours of operation. Quite reasonable, of course, but it meant that Glendon had to stay late to do my plates, which was often hard to schedule as he does have other commitments. Since there were six blocks, and each takes 30 minutes or so (I think), and since he had to re-do many of them (details follow), this was a long process.

So yes, that's the whole time management issue, but the big problem was with the wood blocks themselves. Sort of. Well, there was lots of user error too, but I blame the wood! That plywood blend we've been using works very well for larger, bolder typefaces and images, but we should have listened to Winking Cat Press when he said that he didn't like plywood. We should have thought a bit more about why he doesn't like plywood and about the thickness of the lines and typefaces in the design I was preparing to print. I'd just like to confirm for everyone that plywood, even really high quality plywood, is not the way to go for type smaller than, say 10pt. Some of the first blocks Glendon cut looked weirdly muddy or wavy and printed that way too, and with the super small font, the counters of the letters weren't deep enough and would fill with ink, even if I had very little on the press.

We actually had to go back and change the thickness of the song numbering because the "1" was so thin that Glendon could not cut it. He did it twice and both times it basically crumbled if you looked at it. Glendon ended up having to play around with the depth the laser was cutting or how large a shoulder to add more than we bargained for, resulting in too many do-overs. Quite a few of the blocks got random letters smushed or broken here or there between the time they were cut and when they got to me, and he'd have to redo the entire block then as well. Since we also had to mount them onto other wood to be type high and then chisel off part of the block's non-printing face (or else a bit of it would, on occasion, print too), there were some regrettable chisel accidents, resulting in more waste. We wasted a lot of wood, and the environmentalist in me feels ashamed. I've bought a few of the expensive type high maple wood blocks, and we'll do a bit more experimenting - perhaps those will go more smoothly. Glendon actually has some very nice cherry wood, but it's taller than .918" and he doesn't have any way to bring it down to type high.

Now that I've explained all the horrible parts about our DIY, I must say that cutting the blocks ourselves using found/free materials did come in handy exactly three times. Once was when Matt realized he'd left off a production credit and copyright information, and Glendon was able to quickly re-cut that block. It would have been expensive to resend to a platemaker and Matt would have had to eat that cost. The other two times were when I, behaving like a complete moron, smashed two different plates with a gripper bar (the same gripper each time). The first time I did this was right at the beginning of the print run, and I had just carefully reset all the gauge pins but neglected to move the gripper bars further apart. I was doing a test impression and slowly turning the flywheel by hand when I heard this crunching noise that I've never heard before. The crunching was the gripper compressing the wood block. Of course I stopped and backed the platen away as soon as I heard the noise, but it was too late. That gripper is strong, man; it squished that wood like it was a marshmallow. The second time I did this, on the final block of the whole print run, I really thought I'd learned my lesson, and I had in fact adjusted the grippers properly, but then I moved the block in the chase by a centimeter or something. I ended up forgetting to recheck the gripper, and I smashed the first letters in three lines at the very edge of the plate. Very frustrating. So I would have had to eat the cost of two new plates, but I believe that I may now have learned my lesson.

So that's most of the drama with the plates, except for one final thing, which actually has a happy ending. I was doing the very last run, and I had about an hour and a half to get it done before work, and I REALLY wanted to get it done that day and hand them all over to Matt the next day. For once, everything was going well, and I was listening to NPR and feeding the cases one after another, boom, boom, boom. I'd gotten about half way through my stack of 190 when I noticed a small bit of wood on the rollers as they were returning to the ink disk from the form. I pulled the throwoff lever (I love the throwoff), and plucked the bit of wood from the roller, and noticed that it was the letter "y." Yes, the letter "y" from the "by" in the middle line of the three lines of production credits had somehow completely come off, all by itself - the rest of the plate looked perfect.

Now this is the same plate that Glendon had to re-cut with the extra production credit (and he'd had to cut it twice too), and it's also the same plate, and the same section of the plate where I'd smashed three letters just a day before, causing Glendon to re-cut the plate again. AND NOW THIS ONE RANDOM LETTER JUST POPS OFF!? How is that even possible - thank you plywood!? Amazingly I kept my head, and decided to try and glue the letter back on. Apparently the last few years of bookbinding and messing about with tiny pieces of type have paid off because I actually popped it right back in place on the first try, and it was only after I called Glendon to get his opinion of how long I should wait for it to dry and brag about my dexterity that he reminded me that there was crazy glue on the kitchen table. It might have been better to use that than my bookbinding glue. So I ended up waiting a week to finish up, but when I finally did, the plate behaved fine and I was all done in an hour. I was also able to give Matt the half that were finished when I had originally planned since he didn't need all of them at once anyway. Hooray for happy endings.

As I mentioned above, I split the design into 6 printing plates. This may have been overly cautious, but since this was all so new to me (the weird size and the stock), I wanted to be sure everything printed properly. Obviously the solids needed to be separated from the text, so that's one blue plate right there. Perhaps I could have printed the large orange solid with the two smaller orange solids on one plate, but I wasn't sure if the Pearl, operating with only two rollers, would have the strength or the ink coverage capability for that, so that's two more plates, current total: three. The orange text plate makes four. Finally, the blue text was placed just far enough apart so that I thought it should be split into two sections as well for a grand total of six. Yikes, right?

This is where I need to give a plug for transparency sheets. Do you guys remember those? From high school with over-head projectors? Well they are the best tool for registration, and I love them. You just print out your proof on a transparency and then you can line up your printed proofs as they come off the press. Makes it easy peasy. I'm kind of wondering how much longer the sheets will be around though. Does anyone ever use overhead projectors anymore in this age of powerpoint? Will transparency paper go the way of the dodo bird and the Polaroid?

Okay, printing. Printing the blue text went pretty well except for the aforementioned problems. The only other hiccup was lining up the text on the edges of the CD case. This is actually another block I had to redo because our original measurements were somehow off (which is weird since Matt got the template from Stumptown) and the two bits of text were too close to each other. I solved this by chiseling off the text from one side and printing the rest of the block. Since we'd done another version of that block which had other problems (that honestly I can't even remember at this point), I chiseled everything else off of that block and just printed the remaining edge text. Obviously getting the registration perfect on those edges was a huge bitch and lining up the orange and blue text was tricky. Mostly it worked but sometimes it...was not the best alignment in the world. But a little unevenness isn't too bad; gives it that 'handmade' look?

 
The orange ink had been very difficult to mix, and I'd ended up having to add massive amounts of transparent and opaque white so that it wouldn't be carroty-red. Matt really wanted the resulting bright orange, but it was rather transparent and quite goopy which proved difficult to work with on occasion. The instruments next to the performers' names were originally supposed to be orange, but the ink was so light that it was almost illegible and we switched that text to blue. While the album title and the side text on the CD are sometimes difficult to read, I do think they look right in most lights. I did have to double ink all the orange text however.

Now printing those solids is something I really wanted to discuss, partly because it's probably more useful to most of you (since I think most people aren't making their own blocks with a laser cutter). The results from this print run are also probably a pretty good marker of what my press is capable of right now, so I must write it down for posterity. Obviously the results will change if I use a different paper stock, get a third roller or perhaps even all new rollers (speaking of, how can you tell when you need new rollers? Is it a if you have to ask, you don't need them because you would know by your crappy prints type of thing?).

Anyway, so if you look at my pictures, you see nice, fairly solid coverage, right? Why yes, yes you do, BUT ladies and gentlemen, don't go thinking that you or I can just pop our paper in and print that way, oh no! That was the result of my complete insanity - DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. That nice solid coverage is the result of me inking the plate a couple times before printing and then overprinting anywhere between two and six times. And that's with packing and proper makeready. The solid area is just so large for both images, and the recycled stock was not super-receptive to cushy printing. I think with a Vandercook or a Heidelberg it wouldn't be an issue, but for my own mental health I need to be more aware of my press' limits. On certain prints you can kind of tell at the edges that I printed each multiple times, but I honestly like the effect and I'm pleased with how well the coverage turned out.

Um, yeah. So that's how I printed those way back in October. It took 8 months to post this because it's the longest post in the world. Does length make up for delay? I also decided that it was time to get more serious about professional picture taking, and that took a while to procrastinate. If you have comments/tips about that (or anything), I'd love to hear it.

Is There Anybody Out There?

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if not. This blog has been shamefully neglected of late and I, for one, am sorry about that. I've missed writing and experimenting. The usual excuses apply, and I also have that problem where once something has become "a thing," I feel way more pressure to do it up right. Trying to let go of that. I also took a break from reading much about printing on the internet, my own writing included. I've cleared my head, however, and I'm back, if any of you want to come on back, you can hold me to it.

 
One member of my household has printed lately, but it wasn't me. You may remember that Glendon and I were experimenting with using laser cut wood blocks on the Pearl last summer, and I have more to report on that soon, but Glendon has continued his testing on his own. Over the last year, he's gotten much more experience using the laser cutter, and last week he cut an enormous woodcut. If you can't tell, it's a deconstructed half tone screen image of the Raft of the Medusa, using a dot pattern extrapolated from a medieval woodcut of the beast of the apocalypse. As before, if you've got questions about the process, email me and I'll pass it on to Glendon.

Last year he did a small, 1x3 inch, half-tone block from this painting for me to test on the Pearl, but this is a much more stylized version. Glendon printed it on a Vandercook in his university's printshop. I think he was pretty pressed for time anyway, but he inked with a brayer, not with the Vandercook's rollers. Apparently they rarely actually ink up the press there, which is a pity (I think). Most of the printmaking students focus on other printing methods, so the Vandercook isn't actually used that much, and getting the students used to cleaning the press isn't worth the trouble. That's a topic for another conversation, but I wanted to show-off the fact that I'm slowly drawing the people around me into the letterpress web, and say "hi! let's talk again soon."