Cookies!

After my adventures in the city yesterday, I stayed closer to home today and spent some time making a Christmas classic - Gingerbread!

My gingerbread men were a little wonky, but the stars turned out perfectly.


Christmas tree... check.
Gingerbread... check.
Christmas holidays... SOON!

People Are Amazing

I've been in handmade heaven these last few days. I took yesterday off and managed to make it out to the One of a Kind show before the crazy weekend crowds. The show was quite a marathon, especially since my strategy involved scoping out every booth before making any purchasing decisions and, thus, having to back track through the labyrinth. I managed to scratch a few key Christmas gifts of my list and, oh, how I wish I could post some pictures! Hand-printed fabric, embroidery... lovely.

Today, ventured out for some smaller-scale, but no less impressive arts shows in the city. I dropped by Winter Fling just in time to pick up one of their last loot bags (hooray!) and this stunning lino print card by Katie Muth. A perfect reminder that as frustrating and sometimes limiting lino appears to be, it has the potential to produce beautiful images.



Already starry-eyed with the beautiful crafts at Winter Fling, I then headed down to the OCAD Book Arts Fair. Consider my bookbinding passion officially rekindled. My affections for lino also increased x10 when I saw Marta Chudolinska's incredible novel Back + Forth composed completely out of lino prints. I've only just started to explore it, but already I'm amazed at the haunting narrative of the images she's created.




There were so many other amazing pieces. I wish I could have been able to buy something from everyone and help support such amazing work. Of course, now my own head is buzzing with new ideas, projects, experiments... So many things to add to my 365 list!

The Good Kind of Acid Wash

I went to my second Open Studio class yesterday and the technique of the night was etching. Oh, etching - the perfect combination of line drawing, detail, texture, and shadow. I finally know how to produce the ink effects I love so much in a repeatable format!

It might sound silly, but I actually felt a strange sadness while participating in the process because I kept thinking This is it... This is exactly the medium I've wanted to work in since I started to draw. Why have I never tried this before?

Unfortunately, in addition to learning the finer details of producing an etched print, I also learned how extremely labour intensive the process is. Zinc plates, waxy grounds, acids, solvents, giant presses! Not the kind of material a lady generally keeps around the house.

First, we polished our zinc plates and then coated the surface with a dark brown wax-type liquid called 'ground'. We had approximately thirty minutes to carve the actual image through the ground and into the metal, and, true to form, I picked something overly complex and had to rush my way through it. I used another one of T's old family photographs for inspiration because I knew I could quickly translate the black and white photo into a line drawing. With such limited time, I ended up making some hilarious omissions (check out the uncarved ears!), but I was happy to have at least etched out the main parts of the image.

Next, we placed the plates in an acid bath for 30 minutes to allow the exposed metal to be eaten away enough to burn the image into the zinc plate. This was about the point I realized that there was absolutely no way I could replicate this process at home. Sigh.

Once the acid had worked its magic, we cleaned off the ground and rubbed our prints with black ink, making sure to fill all of the lines completely before cleaning off the excess.


We used heavy, cottony paper to print the images (much like the type of paper used for letterpressing) making sure to soak the sheets in water for a few minutes before placing them over the plate to ensure that the paper had enough softness to press into the tiny lines of the etching. Then, we used a big, hand-turned press to create the prints. The pressure of the roller was so intense that the plate itself left a sizable bite in paper (making the printed image look as if had been placed behind a matte).



The image itself is more than a little flawed, but I love the resulting print. It has an amazing shadowy, aged feel and reminds me of an old daguerreotype. I'm going crazy dreaming up the types of prints that might be possible if I had, say, a few hours to work on an etching instead of just a few minutes.


Fortunately, Open Studio offers a separate 8 week course focused exclusively on etching and something tells me I might end up enrolled in this course at some point in 2010!

In the meantime, does anyone have an acid bath they'd mind lending me?

I'm going to need some more reindeer names...

It was all about the reindeer tonight. Between the black set, the red set, and the black/red set, I printed the reindeer stamp at least 350 times... and then I threw it off the balcony.

Jokes.

The reindeer has actually proved to be an incredibly consistent stamp to print, which helps my bank account and my sanity.

[I apologize for the lame photos, by they way. I really need to stop taking important product shots with a low battery camera late at night. I promise my etsy photos will be more creative.]



I'm still only half way through my big Christmas card order, but I've been making extras of every print so that I can put together some separate etsy sets. Unfortunately, I messed up a little with my card stock order and requested brown recycled card stock that was a size bigger than the envelopes I already had. I'm hoping I can find some envelopes that fit them locally so that I don't need to place another order.

Now it's off to bed. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have reindeer running through my dreams tonight.

Linoblocking Like a Pro

After months of toiling away at my kitchen table, I attended my first Open Studio printmaking course last night and experienced what it was like to make a print with proper inks and a real press. The class was fantastic and some of the examples our instructor showcased as an introduction to the topic of relief printmaking were absolutely mind blowing! After struggling through semi-intricate two inch stamps, it is inconceivable for me to imagine the amount of time, energy, and precision that goes into a 2 x 3 foot print. Seeing that level of skill executed by a local artist seriously restored my creative motivation.

For my own print, I decided to use an idea that I'd had floating around in my notebooks for a few months: a fossil! I've carved most of my prints as a positive image surrounded by negative, carved space, but with a real press at my disposal (i.e. no more ink distribution issues), I decided to carve the image out instead.


We worked with oil-based inks and rollers, which were both new to me. I've been using water-based ink (easier clean-up) and painting it on the image by hand (hence, the consistency issues). The oil-based inks were so lovely to work with because they left such a rich colour impression on the paper. If only I had a twenty foot glass table surface and mechanical press to play with at home!


I loved how the prints turned out and was sad that the three hour class zipped by in no time at all. I took so much time with my initial carving that I didn't even have time to experiment with two colour printing, which was definitely disappointing. The key for me now is to come up with some good, simple designs for the next three classes so that I don't waste too much time thinking of an image or starting with an image that's too complex.

Ideas... inspiration... dinosaur bones! Pretty much the perfect way to spend a Monday evening.


This first class has me even more excited for the next three. After all of my stamping experiments, the lino class felt a little bit like familiar territory, but lithography, screenprint, and etching will be totally new ground.

Of course, while I'm busy dreaming of new printmaking enterprises, I also have to get down to business with my Christmas cards. My paper shipment has arrived and I've got some serious work to get done if I want to fill all of my Christmas orders by December 1st!

Gifts, Weird Projects, Whatnot...

My official birthday may be over, but lovely gifts continue to roll in.

Check out the amazing yellow tote my sister-in-law sent me from NYC! She's currently setting NYU on fire with her ferocious intellect, but in her spare time she has been scouting out Brooklyn's finest paper stores and then baiting me to visit with tales of luxurious paper goods. It's totally working too! NYC, March 2010! (fingers crossed).


And speaking of sweet little paper shops, here is the fabulous organizer I purchased with a birthday gift card from my lovely friend Grace. Not only does the colour set my heart a-flutter, but, if everything goes according to plan, this organizer is going to save me innumerable hours of digging through my card inventory. I'm looking forward to bringing some much need order to the chaos that is my art hutch.



I'm currently waiting for my new order of card stock to arrive, so I turned my thoughts to other projects this week. Work has been really intense lately, so my only real artistic accomplishment was a pencil sketch of a combine that I have wild and wonderful plans for. I sketched this during an 'art night' I had with Bethany and Erin. It was so fun and productive; I really do need to have more of them. (If you click on the image, it should be a little easier to see.)


Next week is shaping up to be a busy one, so I'm not sure how many posts I'll get done. Hopefully, I'll have some fun stuff to show after my first printmaking course on Monday night!

Nearly Perfect

Oh, little wreath stamp... I knew you had it in you!