Postcards

 I'm often quite of enamored with the "old way" of doing things.  Usually this results in oily hands or an unmistakable smell of gasoline lingering about my person.  It also unfailingly leads me to learn things and have some small sense of personal satisfaction in what I've set out to do.  This project was no different (other than I didn't wind up smelling like gas) and is a result of my backwards way of thinking . That and of not getting anything in the mail but bills. 












 I remember the few postcards I got as a kid, how exciting it was to have mail from someone that just wanted to say hi.  So I made some cards from photos I have taken.  Sure I could just send a text or an email to a friend to say howdy but this makes it more fun.  I'm sure all of us get too much mail that's bills and not enough that's personal.












I just printed on cheap-o copy paper bonded the images to a heavier card stock and made a blender pen transfer sheet for my post card back that I whipped out in illustrator.  There you have it (quasi) instant post cards.  If you didn't get one of these and I know you email me your address.  If I don't know you and you want one email me your address and maybe I'll make up something fun and send you one...

March print of the month

 For this month's print I decided  wanted to print on silk.  More to the point I wanted to make something that could actually be used rather than just looked at.  To that end I decided I'd make bandannas, or scarves, or hankies...I also wanted the prints to be dyed into that fabric, not just on it.  I didn't want to be able to feel the print how you can on a  printed T-shirt.  Not hard to do, once you know all of the steps, just quite involved.
I won't go into all of the details, suffice to say that in learning about this process I gained new respect for some of the beautiful fabrics one can purchase.

The screen for this months image

 Long (boring) story short, after one whole day of printing and another of steaming and rinsing, I wound up with an edition of 18 images on silk(11) and rayon(7).

One blue silk hanky with an assortment of rayon hankies on top

 Using dyes is quite a bit different than just mixing some extender with some ink and just getting after it on some paper.  There are many different variables and many different schools of thought on how to address each one.

As a result of this, and of my inexperience, there is quite a bit of variation in the color saturation of all of my prints.   Then after all of the fun of the printing experience all of these still need trimmed and hemmed.  I can say I'd much rather run a TIG torch than a sewing machine but it is still fun.

But overall I am pleased with the results.  I also printed a number of these on paper since I had the screen done anyway.

Print of the month

My girl (Ava) and a few of her friends decided to form a club and to make a print, each, every month and share them with everyone else in the club.  She asked me if I wanted to do it and I said yes.  Ava wanted to do it so she could have an excuse to work on personal projects while she's in school.  I wanted to do it because when I was in school the "fine art" side of things was down played to non existence so this should be 1, a fun creative outlet and 2 a good learning experience since I've never done any sort of printing.

So I printed a run of twenty nineteen.

 

 White silk screen on vellum.

  So far Av and I are the only ones who've managed to get our prints finished and mailed out.  Hopefully everyone else gets their act together and contributes.