Let's start with the mouse block...Ahhh the mouse block, which (* I thought) was 90% finished last week. Well...I printed them, and I thought they were fine...but not quite capturing all the detail in the face and paws... and then I compared the background to one of the proofs and definitely not getting all the detail. By that point, it was like 3 in the morning, so I gave up for the night and decided to think about it. I thought the pressure was right, the ink was right, the paper was right, the block was right, so what changed between the proof and the final printing? The brayer. The top one is with the soft brayer and the bottom one is with a hard brayer (Doh). So I ended up reprinted them.
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| When I say "it took an embarrassing number of proofs to get it right," I'm (sadly) not joking. |
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| At least I was right about it looking fantastic in the pseudo-tapestry. O:) |
The mouse wasn't the only cranky-making block this week...carving the turret is dragging on. It's taking a long time because it's like a miniature...that just happens to be big. While that's hard to explain in words, the pictures sort of show what I mean - here's a close up showing how a lot of these cuts are smaller than the date on a quarter...and there are a lot of them. On the one hand, I think it will be beautiful when it's done and the idea of applying the aesthetics of a miniature on large scale is appropriate for Gothic architecture...on the other hand, I could definitely have made a beautiful version of this less laboriously using larger tools. At this point, more than half way through, it's too late to make that sort of change, and I feel like I just need to see it through. 
Other blocks this week - I made "intermediate sized" rocks for the pseudo-tapestry and the other block for "Luxuria" (Lust) to go in the landscape. (While it's very "not subtle" on the block, I printed it on translucent paper both to mimic latex and to help integrate it into the landscape.) 
In addition to making new things, I also framed and delivered completed pieces to the Albany Institute of History & Art for the upcoming Mohawk-Hudson Regional exhibition (!)
I'm not quite happy with the flowers in the pseudo tapestry yet so I did a lot of "research" - flowers in the yard, flowers in the woods, flowers on the street, flowers in the nursery.
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| I tried to capture a good example of the horizontal bands in the landscape |
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| and, of course, just outside the frame, I had excellent canine assistance :). |
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| And last, but not least, an un-color corrected photo of the sunset from earlier in the week, because one can never have too many beautiful sunsets. |
