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.