Jacob

I printed 15 of these today. The white ink is a little light. I'm going to try printing a second layer of white when this layer dries. Since I got those pins working, I shouldn't have any trouble getting everything lined up again.

DIY Registration Pins

Between the silk screen prints I'm planning and the small linoleum block I haven't printed yet, I decided I wanted to get back to working on perfect registration. So the other day I scrounged around through my unorganized boxes of supplies til I found my trusty registration pins. I also managed to get my hands on a decent quality three hole punch. With these two simple tools it is possible to locate sheets of paper in exactly the same position repeatedly and therefore ensure that you print an image located uniformly on every print. This becomes important when working on multiple color layers. Anyway, it seems that the diameter of all hole punches is not uniform. So the holes I can punch are much bigger than the pins I have. If the pins don't fit into the holes tightly, then the paper can shift and your registration will be shot. The paper punch that matches my pins is over $200, a ridiculous amount for a glorified office tool. The pins that match my punch are $2 each and must be bout in lots of 25. I only need two.

Today I punched some holes in a piece of card and went to the hardware store to find supplies to make my own pins. I found a strange little furniture bolt that fit the hole perfectly. Then I picket up some thin sheet metal. Using a dremel I chopped the bolt into four pieces and then epoxied them onto small squares of the sheet metal. It was easier than I expected. Now I have four pins matched up with my hole punch and the whole thing coast about $5.50. I'll put them to the test tomorrow or later tonight to see how well they work.

Jacob Continued

I spent a little time carving away on this linoleum block today. I guess it is about two thirds of the way carved. I'm bored already. I'll get it done one of these days and get it printed onto a sheet of paper.

Jacob Redux

I started working on a little linoleum block tonight, transferring a drawing and getting ready to carve. I don't know how it will work out, but the idea is to print white ink onto dark paper, resulting in a positive drawing without the need to carve away huge areas of the block. I was planning to do a simple line drawing but then I got caught up with this picture of my nephew that I seem to be using a lot lately.

Print Exchange Clearing House

I decided to start a new blog with the aim to make information about upcoming print exchanges easier to find. If anyone knows of (or is the organizer of) an upcoming print exchange, let me know and I'll get that info posted. printexchanges.blogspot.com

Megan

One of my students from last semester, Megan Askew recently won second place in a photography show. Here's the winning shot. I think it is pretty great and I couldn't be prouder. . . Unless she won first place I guess. Then I'd probably be a little bit prouder.

Lumen Printing

I did a little experimenting tonight with Lumen Printing as an example for my photography class tomorrow. The process takes advantage of the fact that photo paper darkens when exposed to light outside of the darkroom. A sheet of paper is covered with a negative and then light is pointed at it. Usually the sun would be the light source, but it is dark so I used a halogen shop light (the same one I use for burning silk screens.) After exposure, the paper darkens and an image appears. There is no need to develop in any chemicals. The paper is supposed to be fixed in a very week fixer solution to keep it from darkening further and eventually disappearing. I don't have any fixer around, so I just scanned the image to save it digitally. If the image lasts till tomorrow, I'll try fixing it properly.

Butch

Untitled four color silk-screen print on French 100lb Grout Gray cover stock
Image Size: 5"
Paper Size: 5.5"
Edition Size: 27 (12 available for sale)
Price: $10.00

Here's the finished print I've been working on over the last few days. As usual, this is a hand-pulled print, each one a unique piece. As such each one will be slightly different than the others.

Black

It is still amazing to me that a full color image can be produced with just four magic colors. I'll trim these down later and then sign, number and title them. If you think you might want one, let me know.

Cyan

Things are moving along nicely. It looks like I might have time to finish printing these tonight. Plus, the amount of good quality prints will almost definitely be higher than the number needed for the print exchange. If anyone wants one, I'll offer them for sale at a good, low price.

Magenta

I re-burned my screen and then finished laying down a layer of magenta ink. You can start to see the image appearing now. It looks like the experiment will work out OK as long as I can manage to keep my registration relatively tight. Hopefully, I'll get a cyan layer printed tonight and then black tomorrow.

Old Yeller

I started on these screen prints today for a print exchange designed to help us printmakers use up the scraps of leftover paper trimmed off larger prints. These piece of paper are probably too big to really be considered "scraps" but they were leftover from another series of editions. I have a ton of them so I guess this is a good time to use a few of them. The prints don't look like much yet, and the technique is a bit of an experiment, so maybe they never will.

So far printing at home is a bit of a disaster. I don't really have the right space to do the things I want to do. Sometimes, it seems that a sprayer hose in the shower just doesn't work as well as a power washer for removing emulsion from screens. Other times, it blows the emulsion right off before I want it to. That's what happened today. I'm hoping to get a new screen coated and ready to expose as quickly as possible so I can print another color or two and get this job completed before the deadline.

Jacob

I finished cutting and sewing these little things tonight. I accidentally came up with this idea while doing a bunch of multi-layered screen prints for the Second Chance series last year. The stacks of transparencies (left over after the printing) were in some cases, more interesting than the actual prints. A tiny print exchange (even smaller than my own Littlest Print Exchange) offered up the opportunity to implement the technique.

These prints are only 2.25 inches square. They are made from ten layers of laser prints on transparencies, aligned perfectly with each other, and hand sewn together onto a sheet of paper. The effect of the layered transparencies is tough to capture in a photograph. They have a strange, three dimensional quality and the stacked plastic seems almost metallic. In some ways they are reminiscent of daguerreotypes in that the image vanishes and reappears when tilted in the light. I think I'll try some larger versions soon.

Lay It On

Songbird

Here's a way to waste 40 some minutes of your precious time. 57splits.bandcamp.com you can go there and listen to the individual track or download the whole album. It's designed to play all the way through without gaps between songs, but whatever. I guess the easiest thing to do would be to just hit start or download on the player below.

In other bandcamp news: check out the first demos from Halcyon, Nick Garcia's new band.

I Feel Good

I heard about the RPM Challenge from Derek Blackburn. The goal is to write and record a complete album's worth of music during the month of February. I decided to try making a bunch of songs entirely from bits and pieces sampled from pre-existing music. We'll see how it goes. When I'm finished I'll upload the whole thing at bandcamp for those masochists that might want to listen to it. For now, here's a sample.

I Feel Good by goodfeets

Elemental Matters

Opening this week is a unique exhibition intersecting the worlds of science and the arts. Elemental Matters: Artists Imagine Chemistry at Philadelphia's Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum features a collection of artwork presenting different ways to experience the elements and the periodic table. The Periodic Table Printmaking Project, a collection of small, hand-pulled prints, one for each element, will be included in the exhibition.

I made a pair of prints, Einsteinium and Indium, for this project back in 2007 and even helped out by designing the website. Apparently, 2011 is the International Year of Chemistry so the exhibit will be up for the entire year. If you are near Philadelphia it might be worth stopping and checking this show out.

If you are interested in collecting some of the periodic table prints, I have two Indium prints for sale. This was a second run from the original etching plate, but the litho plate was replaced with a blue-green silkscreen. That was followed by a bunch of hand drawn colored pencil elements. The last two print are available for only $40 each, postage paid.

$40.00