Part of today’s work. I actually finished the CMYK, but neglected to take a photo before I dashed out of the shop to refuel with coffee and snacks from the new kabob place. After laying down the yellow layer and still having that shape look completely strange, I had a temporary moment of panic. Had to keep telling myself that the image was originally from a pack of Polaroid film that I’d left in my car for months and that it was unnatural in color to begin with. Printed the black and everything looked alright again. At least a lot more like the mock up. Which by the way, looks like this–

This mock up was in no way complete before I started printing today and I’ve since made some changes. For instance, the whole image is shifted more towards the top left corner. I was originally going to encorporate a landscape element to this print (similiar to the lithographs I did last year), but in the interest of time, I came up with something else that actually makes more sense. I spent the better part of my evening working on these last remaining layers. They will include –

- chine-collé graph paper (I think I am slowly giving up on this remaining completely archival. I think I crossed the boundary when I used the scraps from that old dictionary…)
- portions from an old math textbook
- scribbling! preferrably from a soft lead pencil, enlarged a bit so you can see the anomalies from paper grain
- portions from notes I’ve taken while at MICA. perhaps litho notes, specifically. I still can’t decide whether or not it’s too cheesy…

Could potentially be another twelve color job. I’m becoming very indecisive about the colors. I keep wanting everything to be gray or a variation of gray, but I know I’m just defaulting to the first thing that comes to mind. Which happens to be gray. And boring. Might go with a pastel. Purple to match the lines of my graph paper or pink to match the colors in the old math textbook. Hmm. I just can’t picture it right now. 

I’ve got to get an early start tomorrow, but before I head to sleep, I figured I’d post a couple of things I’ve been reading…

For those unfamilar with my astoundingly routine music related habits, I’ve been reading some recent and old Spoon interviews. This always happens to some degree after seeing some good live music (just went to a Spoon show on Sunday). Music is so powerful I always have to wonder about it’s composed, how all of it’s individual parts get put together in just that perfect way. To be frank, it’s awe inspiring. So, I get very preoccupied with reading about the creative process from a musical standpoint, because it seems so foreign to me. I get even more preoccupied with reading about Spoon (mostly songwriter Britt Daniel) because of the attention to detail, their ability to remain within a certain sound but not be limited by that sound, etc. etc. So many things! Going to stop rambling now and just post those links–

Austin Chronicle article, “Drake Tungsten and His Boy Skellington” circa ’98 or ’99 – very interesting to read comments from the band when they were going through the toughest part of their career. 

Interview with Jim Eno from threemonkeysonline.com – in all these years of article reading, I think this is first I’ve read with Jim Eno as the subject.

Houston Chronicle article about Britt Daniel & the Bee Gees – correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like talking about influences in music is easier than art. or at least more entertaining?

I have more, but in case anyone actually reads this, I’m going to try and seem less crazy.

Ok, sleep.

Done! Started on Wednesday and finished on Saturday. I’m really happy with the yellow shape (not originally planned) and how bright the colors look overall. Looking back at the mock-up, I much prefer this. Didn’t really come together until the yellow layer. 

“Great Wall”
12-color screenprint with chine-collé
15 x 22″

In an effort to keep up with my posting, I am writing this with utter exhaustion. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good day of printing. However, lots of standing on my feet and having a body that hasn’t been terribly happy with me lately has left me feeling not so awesome. Gotta carry on anyway and you bet your ass I’ll be back in the shop bright and early tomorrow.

Apologies for the camera phone pictures, but it didn’t really occur to me to bring my camera today. Overall printing went pretty smoothly. Here are some of the issues/thoughts that I had:

- Totally snafu’d the registration on this one! Printed out all the registration marks on the film, crop marks, etc. Basically anything to help me line up all of these layers. And then totally negated all that work by placing the film on the screen in such a way that none of those helpful things exposed. Haha. I think I managed ok by eyeballing it and using mylar as a back-up, but it could certainly be tighter. 
- Idea for registration next time: make the document in Photoshop roughly two inches bigger (all around) than the image, then print films with registration marks. This way the film isn’t so awkwardly large. And it doesn’t waste paper.
- This is the first time I’ve printed with TW-Graphics ink before for my own project. Well, partially. The process inks I mixed were Speedball colors and TW base (a 50/50 mix as I have been taught). It makes all the difference! The resulting print isn’t so…chalky and flat as typical, all Speedball prints. Not to say that the TW base makes it glossy. But it definitely has a slight sheen and it seems…denser? Still searching for the right words to describe.
- TW base makes the ink much more runny. Which is still manageable, but I think it might be contributing to the dot gain. (This is something I’d really like to tighten up in the future) It’s nowhere near as bad as the CMYK prints I did last year where I threw in too many complicated factors – artwork too snug on the screen, improper squeegee length, impatience (surprisingly better at this now!), not to mention my general inexperience. 

Overall, I’d have to say I’m pretty happy with how this came out. I think what makes me feel really good about this, is that I can tell that I’ve actually improved as a printer. Not to say that I am a master, far from it, but it is good to look back on old prints and see that I’ve learned from my mistakes. Here’s hoping the next few layers turn out equally as well! Now for some much needed sleep.

I have a love/hate relationship with digital mock ups. It’s great to see what a print might look like before going through all the trouble of printing it, but it’s also very easy to fall into the Photoshop trap. I’ve been a lot better about this recently and haven’t been overplanning things as much. I’ve actually made more decisions on the fly. Most of which end serendipitiously. (Surprise!) You can blame the Longitude series for that. Anyway. New work.

- The old photograph of my parents will be a cymk halftone and the color will probably look nothing like the digital version
- The tan shape on the bottom is just a placeholder for some chine collé French Dur-o-tone newsprint (yay, archival “newsprint”)
- I have no idea what color(s) the text is going to be. I’ve made five separate layers, but I have a feeling I will need more. Or I’ll possibly need more torn paper shapes behind them. Or both. 
- I was originally going to include a black litho layer into this print, but I think it might be too much. And to be honest, I think I wanted to include it because it’s been a long time since I’ve printed a litho and that worries me. However, the more I think about it, the contrast between the oil based and the acrylic ink would be nice…
- Tentative title, “Great Wall.” Cheesy, yes, but it’s relevant, I promise. And not just in a “Ha ha my parents are Asian” way.

Almost forgot to mention that this print is a reworked/rethought version of what this painting was supposed to be–

I tried to finish it when I was home, but I should know better than to rush things. It usually takes me a ridiculous amount of time to finish paintings. I need to leave them alone for a while before I can work on them again. Otherwise I start nitpicking and the next thing I know I’ve painted the whole thing white again. Most of the time I don’t really feel much like a painter anyway, so it ends up being a “if the mood strikes me” sort of a thing. 

Promise I’ll be better about posting progress pictures, thoughts and such. Writing this post has already been pretty helpful.

A few detail shots of cards I’ve been printing. See more on flickr.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been as diligent as I’d like. Which doesn’t leave me many excuses for not blogging. However, a new suite of prints is on the horizon, meaning many sleepless nights for me but also bountiful eye candy to the (maybe) two people who actually read this and are not in Baltimore. I’ll be posting a digital mock up soon.

I can’t start printing until my ink gets here (sometime next week?), which is frustrating. A terrible time to be impatient.