"Making" Letterpress assignment- now on 100% less newsprint!

I finally shot pictures of my finished letterpress print so I could satisfy my capitalist streak and sling 'em up in the etsy. The bottom one I did with a rainbow light-to-dark blue marbleized roll (which is really easy to achieve on the Vandercooks with the automatic rollers). I already got the rant about shimming and cheating done when I posted the first roughs I did on newsprint, so I'll spare y'all that again. However, I was saving these in the studio so I could screenprint a speech bubble over the text as a nod to Neil's role in comic books, but I just discovered today that I burned the image in reverse, and I took it as a sign that the universe didn't really want me to print it. Also I'm freaking tired of the print dungeon.

I had my last Printmaking and Modern design class on Saturday! We did a print exchange and went to the Wayzgoose festival at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle. I did both of these things highly exhausted and hung over, but incredibly it didn't take away from the COOLNESS of the Steamroller Smackdown at Wayzgoose. Artists printed huge linoleum and vinyl blocks (think 3x5 feet huge- and the average lino block fits in the palm of your hand) using a STEAMROLLER as a roller and PLYWOOD as a tympan. Here are some pictures I ganked from flickr to give you an idea:

They hung the posters on the side of SVC to dry, which is pretty frickin' brilliant when you think about how hard it would be to make a drying rack that big.

There were teams of artists inking each block. Each team got half an hour to pull as many prints as possible- when you know a little about how printing works, watching them go through the process under those time constraints is HELLA nerve wracking.

They used a carpet as a pusher blanket, plywood as the tympan, and then they put a goddamn steamroller on top of it. It was pretty incredible.

Pulling up the finished prints. Anyone who knows a little about printing- think about the registration on this thing. Just- think about it. I saw more than one HUGE piece of paper ruined by shifting it around to make registration.

So now I'm a little bit freer to work in the at home studio, although I won't be producing work at a furious pace to meet class deadlines anymore. Until metalworking starts up in October, at least!

Letterpress assignment (with apologies to Neil Gaiman)

Letterpress is easily the most frustrating way to have fun in the printmaking studio. It requires an obnoxious application of math, forcing your brain to read upside down and backwards, and in my case, cheating shamelessly when Judy wasn't looking to haphazardly shim my type into the press with tiny bits of wood and metal. It's funny- to make something look messy and uneven takes about three times the energy and calculation than it would to make it look neat and even. (unless you decide to just accept that your professor is going to call you out during critique for your godawfully wrong press set-up and cheat, like I did)

The piece up there is the first rough on newsprint that came out like I wanted- when I finish overlaying the screenprinted speech bubble I want on there in the studio, I'll bring home my finished babies and show them to the world, and sling 'em up on my etsy shop.

The whole process- EVEN WITH CHEATING- took me eight straight hours in the studio, running on a cup of coffee and an orange. I'm so bad at remembering to eat when I work in the print dungeon at school, and my bestie who works at the nearest cafe isn't my bestie anymore, so no more surprise food deliveries (that kid seriously kept me alive on more than one marathon printing occasion last year, bless their considerate heart). Life as a printmonkey ain't easy, and I'm off to the studio all day again today as soon as I hit publish on this.