…my dining room table eagerly volunteered to assist with the drying portion of the invitation reply card printing process, while the office/studio continues to undergo a lengthy organization and neatification improvement project. Special thanks also to the living room floor.

Oh! Hello there. It seems that Christmas is closing in fast, in case you – like me – hadn’t noticed. This past weekend I actually achieved the sending of a small batch of handmade Christmas cards; though the big story really is that Christmas cards even made it from my hands into envelopes with stamps and addresses and stuff, and into the mail, period. All because we got a big, fat helping of SNOW! over the weekend, and as long as I was forced to stay indoors, I figured I’d stay on the couch in front of the Christmas tree, listening to Christmas music and eating a big, fat helping of peppermint bark while writing Christmas cards and wrapping presents. I’m trying to get in the mood.

6×6 no. 9, monotype and linocut

I’ve also been pushing myself to finish something that’s been working mostly in my head for a long while, only now I’m actually making it happen. Just a few finishing touches and I’ll tell you all about it. It’s all very crazy and mind-swizzling. You heard me.

Thankfully, there’s printmaker Hannah Skoonberg. I stumbled across her Etsy shop, which is chock full of gorgeous relief prints that focus on the spiritual, meditative nature of trees: beauty stripped to its bones. Seeing her work instantly makes me feel calmer; she expertly captures the quiet, stately beauty that I love about trees in winter. She’s a very strong contender for my next major art purchase.

Stillness, 3-color reduction linocut

Look! No footprints. It feels so tranquilizingly empty. I want to make snow angels.

Devotional, 2-color relief print

In the description, she says that Devotional (above) – at 18 x 24 inches – took her an entire semester to carve. I have a 5 x 7-inch block that I’ve been working on for a year and it’s still not done. Do you think she still has all her fingers, too? I don’t want to know. That would make her too splendid.

Meditation, 5-color reduction linocut

I’ve been quietly and steadily working on some new print designs for a few weeks now. Today I pulled the first proof! I put it behind a black mat to get a better idea of what the finished print might look like.

The idea came from wanting to play with the quality of light linocuts create — how the black ink on white paper causes the light areas to almost glow. Somehow my brainstorming led me to the halos I see in the car at night when I’m being blinded by headlights, and so the whole series is based the patterns of line that appear when I squint directly into various sources of light. I’m not sure I’ve quite gotten what I wanted, but that’s why we do proofs first.

I pulled a two-color proof of the Oh Snap block I started months ago, which gave me the opportunity to test out the metallic ink I picked up recently. And then, well…

I suppose I could say I got bored and started playing with the leftover ink, but instead I’ll say I got creative and we’ll just leave it at that.

Happy birthday to an excellent production assistant, a brilliant common sense consultant, and a spectacular friend.

When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, Keith told me that (besides a peach pie and a viewing of Wolverine) all he wanted from me was to print something, preferably using my new etching press. So from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon I had managed to go from design on paper, to linoleum block (and only stabbed myself once! On the elbow. Please don’t ask.), to proof. I’ll clean up the cut lines around the design, and then separate the center diamond from the floral design so that I can print with two colors.

I came very close to one-upping that, but didn’t have time, what with Mother’s Day celebrations and all. I’ve got two three-day weekends coming up, so I’m looking forward to having some luxurious, guilt-free productive art time. And then I’ll show you what else I started last weekend. Yeah, man.

I’m down to the last month or so of my master’s thesis project, and so until my semester ends on May 3, there’s nothing, nothing I tell you, coming out of this lady’s studio. But I did get something new.

It’s a small etching press: a Blick Econo Etch Model II. Nothing fancy, nothing fancy at all, but it should enable me to pull prints faster and more consistently. Plus this style of press is so fun to use. It’s cathartic. I’m itching to use it, but have yet to make the time.

I’m also itching to finish a block I started around Christmastime. It’s been on my dining room table — linoleum shavings and all — for months now. MONTHS! If all goes well, I’ll have it done in time to make this year’s Christmas cards — and mail them out! It would be a first. A Christmas miracle.

And see? I even shed blood while carving it.

So remember, when you receive that little piece of Christmas cheer in your mailbox this December, remember the pain and sacrifice I endured. It required two Bob the Tomato band-aids.*

What am I DOING thinking about Christmas?! I want to think about warmer weather. I want to think about May 4.

May 4, please hurry. I have printing to do.

——–

* Note: Regular band-aids are not conducive to doing anything when taped over your index finger like this; liquid band-aid is far more convenient. Just remember that when you see the kind labeled “NON-STINGING!” it may be more expensive, but it’s labeled that way for a reason. A very good reason. (Yowch.)

I love carving linoleum.

It’s so soothing. I could carve, and carve, and carve, and carve all day long, until there was no linoleum left.

But that would be silly. And so eventually it comes time to pull a proof. You know, to see where all that carving has gotten me.

And as much as I love printing — the smell of the ink, the sound of the brayer — I also love having clean hands when it’s all over with.

I love the simple tools.

And I love the first inking. My love for the first inking is second only to my love of carving linoleum.

Most of all, I love it when all my love pays off with a good proof. Even though I don’t think the image is exactly perfect, if you pronouce the words just right, you should get it anyway. (I love puns, too.)

Ready?
That’s all you get to see for now. The idea hit me while I was in the shower — exhausted after a long day, an even longer weekend, and a challenging face-off with the treadmill. After a two or three-month hiatus, I’m working on another linoleum block, for another hand-printed greeting. Why didn’t I think of it before?! Augh! All this time, the idea’s been right in front of my nose!

I wanted to print a good lemon slice this weekend, dagnabit! So I busted out the Wonder-Cut and started carving with my brand-new linoleum cutter (no rust!). But while the Wonder-Cut carves like buttah, I can’t get some of the tight little lines and details that I like, AND I’ve encountered some problems printing designs that are more open (as you’ll see below) because it’s just not as sturdy under pressure. However, it only took me an hour or two to carve out this block, start to finish, on Saturday morning — determined to make up for my lousy print session Friday.

The beauty of a newly inked block never gets old. *sigh* And it printed SO MUCH BETTER than the screen thing! And it looks more like a lemon, less like an eye! Glory is mine.

I was feeling so confident, I decided to pull a few more proofs of the goldfinch I’d carved out a couple weeks ago. The goldfinch previously did not print well — and here is where the softness of the Wonder-Cut was a problem. I had essentially created the outline of the goldfinch; there is a second block, for printing the yellow. The yellow block printed fine (except for the expired yellow ink, which has since been replaced), but because there isn’t anything in the middle to keep it steady, the black block kept smooshing and sliding a bit, allowing the ink to squish out of the edges.

The print on the left shows the ink squishing. The print on the right shows the ink NOT squishing, because I figured out how to fix it!

Can this day get any better?! Maybe with a little more yellow.

Over the past weekend I made time to get in the studio and finish off the block I’ve been working on for the past few weeks.

I carved out a few more elements to tie the whole design together: a box to enclose the donkey and grass, and the text, which helps drive the punch line home. For ease of printing, I mounted all of the pieces on a 4 x 6 inch piece of project plywood.

And the proofs turned out so gosh-darned GOOD, I decided to go for it and do a run of 15 cards on some A6 folded stock I had in a light gray (“Cement”) from Paper Source.

I gave one of the proofs to my friend Jen. As the muse behind the whole idea, I thought she’d certainly earned it!

I’ll probably match them up with Moss envelopes. Or should I try a darker gray? Chocolate? I had thought I’d like Curry, a golden-ish yellow, but the contrast just wasn’t enough to look good. The bold linocut print makes the yellow envelopes look a little wimpy, and I don’t want no wimpy-looking envelopes.

Get it?

Ah well, I also made time to start on another design, which didn’t proof very well, and I need to buy new inks. I’ll try again when I’ve got some new yellow. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with him yet, but I’m thinking he might be a perfect little Curry companion.