Littlest Prints

Since moving the Littlest Print Exchange website from blogger to its own, official domain, traffic has increased on a month my month basis. There are only a couple of days left this month and the visitor count is sadly, about 80 less than it was last month. I'd prefer that the upward trend continues. If you want to help out, simply visit littlestprintexchange.com.

While you're there you might as well look around. There are galleries of the last two portfolios and a list of all the artists participating in the third. Links to everybody's websites are provided. Look around and you'll find an exclusive song from Yea Big. There's also a store featuring prints donated by some of the artists. Prices are super cheap too.

Hellhound

A new 57 Splits Album. I'm going to try to release six full length records this year. Every track on this one is based around one or more samples from a Robert Johnson song. Hence the title. It is set up for a free download, if you like it.

Extended

Leftovers

A package arrived the other day with a stack of prints from the Leftovers II Print Exchange. My selection contained a couple of real standouts including this really nice lithograph from Kathryn Polk. There are some plans to exhibit the entire portfolio so keep an eye out to see if it comes to your area.

In more self-serving news, I came across a nice write up about my work at The Print Perspective. It makes me want to get started on a new body of work.

Max Black

I made these little xeroxed photo books a couple of years ago. Inside there's about sixteen pages of badly half-toned, black and white pictures. The covers are screen printed, white ink on weird shimmery, black card stock. They were completed in an edition of fourteen books. I want to give them away. Send me an email with your address. The first fourteen will get some low-resolution goodness in the mail.

Champ

I finished these today with a layer of clear ink over the top of several screen printed layers and an inkjet layer. Getting the inject to print exactly where I wanted it was pretty hit-or-miss and I only ended up with exactly the number of good prints needed for a print exchange meant to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I need to get them packed up and put into the mail to meet the May 1st deadline. Eventually, one print from each edition sent in will be offered for auction. I'll post more info once I know when the auction will be.

I Almost Had an Idea

Party Balloons

Just a couple more old negatives "scanned" with the negatizer. I really need to get out and shoot some new pics now that the weather is getting nicer. There's the Rhubard Festival coming up this month that I hope to check out, plus the Farmer's Market is opening up again soon. I should also start going to auctions again where interesting people often congregate and they're so engrossed in what they're doing that they don't notice when they're being photographed.

Also, today, after many months of non-activity, I opened a new show at Captive Werewolf. So check that out.

The Littlest

Yesterday the fiftieth member of the 2011 Littlest Print Exchange secured his spot. The complete list of participants can be seen on the 2011 portfolio page. A few diligent artists have already sent in their editions. It is shaping up to be another great portfolio. There are still a handful of exhibitions planned for the 2010 portfolio as well. Any ideas for exhibitions of the portfolio in the Chicago area would be more than welcome. Prints from last year and the year before are still available for a ridiculously low price in the exchange store.

Eff Stop

All my plans for the day went belly-up because of the rain and my incapacity to properly store the screens I wanted to print today. Oh well. I did manage to do some testing with the Negatizer, running through many f/stops to find the one (f/11-f/14) that gives the best sharpness but doesn't reveal the texture of the laptop screen beyond the negative. I also ran through a lot of white balance settings to find one that gives the truest color (2500 kelvin) and therefore needs the least amount of digital color balancing.

Negatizer

More from the Negatizer. If you look at the full size image you can see some texture coming though the image. I think that's actually the pixels from the laptop screen I'm using as a light box. I think I can solve it by using a larger lens aperture for shorter depth of field. I might also just shoot into a better light box with a nice clean white surface.

DIY Negative Digitizer

So I don't have a scanner at my disposal that can handle 120 negatives but I want to get those size negatives into a digital environment. What am I to do? Today, I devised this contraption for shooting negatives with a digital camera. It is basically just a tunnel to keep out any unwanted light. I've attached an old flash extender as a camera mount to keep everything lined up and steady. (A strip of wood with a tripod adapter sized bolt through it would work pretty well.) The negative carrier is nothing more than a folded piece of mat board with a negative sized hole cut though it. The negative is placed inside the carrier and then slipped through a slot through the sides of the tunnel. Once everything is together, you can just point the whole thing at an even light source and shoot away. I pointed it a blank white screen on my computer. I think a white piece of paper with a light shining on it would work as well. The results probably aren't as good as you could get with a decent scanner, but after you get the file into photoshop, invert it and adjust the colors, it doesn't look too bad.

Wampa

Printed and ready to be shipped to the 5th Annual Oregon Ink Spot International Print Exchange, another of the portfolio exchanges I'm participating in this year. I do have a couple extras if you want one. 5" x 7" screenprint and inkjet. The typical paypal button follows.

$10.00

Paste Up

I've been using some Liquitex blending medium and/or drying retarder to add transparency to my screen printing inks. Locally, transparent base is impossible to find and I just haven't gotten around to mail-ordering any. I've been toying with the idea of using wallpaper paste as an ink base. Today I finally made it to the hardware store to check out their selection. I wanted a powdered paste so I can mix it to my own thickness preference. It took a couple of stores before I found paste which wasn't already in paste form. The only brand available was Zinsser Sure Grip.

The instructions list several different water to powder ratios for use with different types of papers. Their ratios also call for the use of the entire package of powder. Obviously I don't need that much ink mixed at one time so I decided to just figure out my own recipe. I came up with mixture of 2 cups water and 3 tablespoons of powder. The package says, "It readily dissolves in cold water without forming lumps". However, my first attempt formed one huge, unworkable lump. So I tried again with hot water, mixing the powder in very gradually. After stirring for about 10 minutes the paste was still fairly lumpy so I poured it into an old blender that I only use for making paper. A few blast of the blender and the paste is smooth as could be. I'll experiment with some printing tonight and see if it needs to be thickened or thinned.

I'm not sure how archival this new ink might be. From what I've read it should be pretty good. I found a Zinsser technical data sheet online which says the paste is "starch based" so I guess it should be fine. The package of powder was about $3.50 and should make at least a gallon of ink. So that's pretty cheap.