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January 14, 2006

Studio Saturday: bring out your dead

Here I am, trying to put one over on y'all and pass off the same old wood block as new work. This is what I did this week, started hacking the background off the blocks to get rid of the horrible wood grain. I also spent a great deal of time sharpening my tools, which I didn't think to get a picture of. You'll just have to trust me that they're good and sharp, except for the one I've been cutting this block with, because, jeez. Such crappy wood.

I started cutting into one of the new blocks of the same image; just little lines for the first colour, then both blocks will be reduced in stages and printed on top of each other, back and forth. I'm thinking about putting a wallpaper-ish pattern in the background on the new blocks. I was thinking of using a William Morris wallpaper pattern but couldn't find one that was exactly what I wanted, but he did do a carpet with a lotus flower that is clearly designed to be a repeating pattern, so I'm going to print that out from the computer repeated and see how I like it. I wanted a lotus design because of the Buddha-esque pose, but it's also a cunty little flower, which is a very nice bonus.

Speaking of the naughty bits, I dug out this old thing today:

I put the ground on this plate over a year ago and haven't gotten around to etching it yet, but I hope to soon (and the four other plates that make up the rest of the figure, too). It's just sort of a pain in the arse, because we don't have good enough ventilation at Green St. to have a nitric acid bath, so we have to take zinc plates up to the undergrad studio to bite them. Wah. It's not like there isn't a bus right from one front door to the other, I've just felt way too lazy to do it.

So the reason I got the plates out was to trace the images onto Pronto plates so that I can do a couple of Sharpie drawings to print on top of or underneath the zinc plates. This is basically the same image as the thirteen girls, so I'll have lots of options for printing these: the etchings, the old lino block and as many Pronto plates as I feel like making.

That's right. I dug out old unfinished work from a year ago and traced it onto a piece of plastic and I'm showing it to y'all like it's new work. For shame.

For those of you who only come here for the knitty, I should have a finished Must Have Cardigan to show off in a couple of days. It's been put together for a week, but needs a wee mistake fixed up before I do the button band (I've decided to go for the buttons rather than a zipper, since the vintage wooden buttons I've been saving are just too perfect for this sweater not to use). I'm aiming to wear it on Tuesday; stay tuned.

Posted by jodi at January 14, 2006 10:27 PM | categories:  in the studio

Comments

Posted by: Snowball at January 16, 2006 11:13 AM

Posted by: jae at January 16, 2006 11:11 PM