the gocco gods hate me

Poppies for Gocco
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

I can't believe it is already Friday! This week sure did go by in a whirlwind. I hope you guys have more exciting plans than the no plans that I have. I'm just going to be hanging around the house with Jon making art when I feel up to it.

I bought a Gocco silkscreening kit for myself for my birthday this February because I found a used one for a killer price. But I was far too sick at the time to actually use it. When I did try using it about a month later my screen failed to burn properly, I got discouraged and put it aside. I would say away but is having it sit under my printing press really away? I just wasn't feeling inspired or motivated to use it and I didn't want to waste the expensive and hard to get supplies.

Then yesterday I got to thinking about it again and thought maybe if I adapted an older design that I knew that I liked I could make it work. Plus according to Heather Jeany who works pretty much only using Gocco I could make masters using black printouts from my HP inkjet. Normally people say only laserjet works but she uses her inkjet all the time with fantastic results. And we have the same printer so it should work for me too.

Well it didn't work for me too. The screen didn't burn at all. On the bright side all I wasted were bulbs and I have a lot more bulbs than I do screens. But for some reason my batch of black ink must not have enough carbon in it. After venting with her on the phone for awhile I remembered that Jon's office has a laser printer. So I sent him a copy of the image at the correct size and asked him to print me out a couple of copies of it. He had to work late but at least I should be goccoing by the next day.

I put the Gocco aside and did some successful but tiring woodblock printing. When he came home the prints were huge. He hadn't unclicked the option to stretch the image to fit the paper so it had indeed stretched the image to fit the paper and is totally useless for me. The gocco is a small machine for making things like greeting cards. I've heard certain pens have enough carbon in them to work but I don't want to risk it and will wait until I can get a good laser print.

This image is a photoshop mockup of what I want the final card to kind of look like. The blank cards I have are an orange called "poppy" of all things and my poppy image will be printed in a sparkly gold ink. Once the cards are dry they will be packaged in a rich chocolate colored envelope. If I ever get this to work I think they will look quite lovely!

I really wish I could work on this today and not wait until tomorrow. I need to find something else artistic to do with myself. If I am feeling brave I may print some more. It hurt like hell doing it yesterday but the rush of creating again felt so good!

Hopefully greeting cards will be appearing in my shop on Monday. Too bad I am totally out of categories and am going to have to be clever to find a way to make a section of them. I may have to kill the neat but disposable favorites section.

Worth the pain

Face ATC/ ACEO
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

This alone is worth my sore feet, the cankles and exhaustion that I am feeling now after printing. I certainly don't have many new pieces, maybe six if I am lucky, whereas I used to be able to print thirty pieces from start to finish in a day. Those days are behind me for now and I am fine with that because I truly enjoy what I am able to produce when it finally does come. This may be small but I love it. The leaves look so perfectly and carefully placed even though that is not the case at all. The leafy background was printed a good two months before I even thought of the face block. I knew it wasn't finished so I put it aside and grabbed it today to see what would happen when combined with this block and good things happened. The style of the face greatly reminds me of this early piece, one of my first woodblock prints ever actually. It has the same rough carving and drama.

It was worth it but I hurt so bad now. My left ankle is killing me while my right one feels fine. But both of my feet hurt. Standing for so long is not good for me at all. I am proud of myself!

Before I printed these woodblocks I attempted using my Gocco again, but unfortunately the screen failed to burn. Jon is going to print out the image I need before he leaves work on the laser printer and that should work better. This gocco plan is closely based on my poppy series. The Photoshop mock up is just loosely what I think it may look like since I plan on using gold ink that sparkles on the orange cards. Too bad I have no envelopes and will need to go to the Paper Source to get some. Not the easiest place for me to get to. I hate Porter Square.

I have ink that needs to be cleaned up but it is going to have to wait. I need to keep my feet up so the swelling can hopefully go down and rest for a bit in the air conditioned bedroom.

Today was a lot cooler than the rest of the week has been and I hope I am not the only person that was able to take advantage of it in some way.

Working small

Completed Face Woodblock
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Yawn! I have been up for hours yet my brain still hasn't caught up. The problem with taking medicine to sleep is that it does leave me with a bit of a medicine hangover that is hard to shake. But if I don't take the medicine I don't sleep and that is much worse. I'm drinking a pot of tea not. I hope everybody else is having a more alert morning, soon to be after noon than I am.

I haven't carved a new block in so long. The last block I finished carving was the large maple leaf block over two months ago and that wasn't even a new design but something I had started back in November. So I have been doing doodles on paper and on wood. And I can't even remember the last time I carved a block specifically to be used for art cards and only art cards. So now is the perfect time to focus on that, they are quick to carve and the wood is so small the money lost if I mess up is piddly. Not much of a time loss either. The lack of any sort of real risk is something I find freeing when I am in a creative slump.

I carved this face on a 3.5"x4" block of scrap wood. Bigger than an art card so that when I use it I can place the blank cards in different spots for different compositions. On the other side of it I have poppies. The image should look very familiar since it is the same poppies I have been offering in a 6"x6" size for over a year now shrunk down. I was doodling and had a drawn but uncolored and unshrunk shrinkydink pendant lying on my desk that I happened to glance at. I also had a blank art card that I picked up and placed near the future pendant. At that size it would suit an art card quite nicely I realized. So I transfered my drawing onto the wood, got out my magnifying visor to help me carve the tight spaces and carved it.

Now I have quite a few new images to print once I clean off my desk. Then I can print. Other than that today should be pretty quiet and laid back. I think I am going to meet Jon at the Museum of Fine Arts tonight to check out the Edward Hopper exhibit they are having. That museum hasn't had an exhibit that interested me since the Gauguin exhibit back when we first moved here four years ago! Then we will get dinner somewhere in that area. Our favorite Thai resturant is around there but I think both of us would like to find someplace new.