Thursday, December 16, 2010

Lana won't be at the Market this Saturday!


Sadness!  Lana is not going to be at the Charlottesville Holiday Market this Saturday the 18th!  I've finally managed to pick up some of the crud that everyone's been infected with.  Bleh.  I guess it was bound to happen at some point or another.  I'm sad that I will miss out on the hand made birdhouses, yarn, mittens, scarves, wreaths, brooms, pottery, candy, sausages, and empanadas!  You guys can go and get in on the last of all these locally made goodies, though!

Friday, December 10, 2010

More fun prints and handmade stamp goodness this Saturday!


Yep, we're going to get out in it again this Saturday at the Charlottesville Holiday Market!  There is the addition of my friend Jenny Swab who crafts these wonderful stuffed animals out of socks, gloves, and old sweaters.  I'm particularly fond of her Glove Octopus stuffed animals!  I will still be featuring my hand carved Cork Stamps and prints of my Farm People along with Holiday Cards and some other prints that I do.  There will lots of other wonderful goodies about so come on down and don't miss out!

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Exchange #47 Spoiler Alert!


I'm killing two birds with this stone. I have a river themed show in April and also this exchange due so I thought I would combine the two. In my river themed show, I want to attempt to glorify our local Chesapeake Watershed/Appalachian flora and fauna to the extent that the Arts and Crafts printers glorified European and Medieval themes. I knew I wanted to do a print of a crayfish but wasn't exactly sure of how it would translate. This end sketch isn't exactly the vision I initially had but I can always sketch more. For now, I think this is lovely little arrangement. When I first began sketching I rendered numerous crayfish atop rocks in a creek with their claws raised in the air. I sat back and the image seemed idiotic to me. Having played in creeks I knew they usually hid under rocks and were loners. This final arrangement seems to do more justice to the truth than anything else. I wouldn't mind a quiet sunny afternoon under a stone with the water softly rushing by as I flicked my antennae back and forth. I intend to have a broken border to add some interest and am hoping to include some bokashi and maybe other surimono techniques. We'll see. For now this is a good start.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

2010 Charlottesville Holiday Market

So, the Charlottesville Holiday Market will begin this Saturday! I will be there on the dates and times listed in space #52. I'm excited to see how it turns out as it is now in the Farmer's Market Space instead of down in front of the Amphitheater. There is room for upwards of 100 crafts persons so I'm sure there is going to be a good selection of things. There is also an arts and crafts show going on in the Ice Park Space so this Saturday is turning out to be a real Downtown Arts Show!

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Irons in the Fire


The Raucous Auction at the VABC sure lights a fire in one's soul to get printing again! Everyone's enthusiasm and awe at the different works up for auction is infectious so I pretty much stayed at my drafting table today. For weeks (and maybe months) I've been only furtively creating things. It was mostly journaling and note writing. That's a good practice but if you did that nonstop you'll never make anything. So, today I took up the torch and set out on a journey to build the foundations of three projects that take priority on my list of "to-do".
Above is the mock up for the newest (and first that I am participating in) VABC group project. The project is called "Indulgences" and the finished product will be a receipt book full of tickets for different indulgences. I previewed the design that will be printed on the back of each ticket.  Frank Riccio has designed for us an intricately beautiful image and it rocks the house! Garrett Queen has worked up the design format that we will be working in and did a perforation along one side on the sample and I'm really excited! It looks like a legitimate contract! The preview image was a 20% off coupon for purgatory. I've got something a bit more cynical in mind for mine. As you can read, it's a ticket to "The Big Sleep" which is a universal product of "The Big Industries", headed up by the Devil. I chose the receipt side to represent the terms of contract. This is just a mock up within the perimeters of the page. I typed everything out in photoshop and then printed it out to arrange on the real thing. There will be a little bit of wiggle room designed in but I wanted to get a general feel of how the sorts will fit when ready for print. I've decided I will design and hand carve the title at the top and the titles of each of the "Big Industries" with an image integrated in each title to represent the company. I'm going to print it in the sootiest black I can find.  I already have bone black and antiquarian black from Graphic Chemical. Those are two good contenders I think.  The imagery will be gritty and graphic and the "Big Company" titles will be the only parts of the ticket to have any color. I can't wait!!


The next project I worked on was my concept for a business card. Up until now, I've been designing images online and ordering cards from Overnightprints.com. They did my post cards for the show in July and I was none too happy. Admittedly, I should've ordered them earlier so that if there was an issue I could've had them redone but it was too little too late. I can understand bad design but the registration in the colors was off so it was jarring to look at and it really irritated me.
I've stayed away from printing my own business cards for two reasons. The first reason is business cards are small and tedious so printing each one is a pain in the ass. The answer to that is to set enough type to print a whole page and then cut them down to size afterwards but it is just as tedious to justify and measure the type for a whole page as it is to print little cards one at a time. Reason number two lies in the print itself. I kind of have a hang up on printing cards because the line gets blurred between "craft" and "fine art". The process is the same but the philosophy is different. One wouldn't think twice about tossing out a card but there is no way you would part with a "fine art print". So, I sat down and had a long and hard grapple over what to do. In the end I decided that if I love printmaking and am going to continue doing it, a card representing what I do would be the best way to go about advertising myself. I set about designing a template for a woodblock that is partitioned into "card sized" images. I'll carve these out and run them off in different colors. When I hand out these cards I will now be giving away tiny prints that people will hopefully enjoy. I'm hoping it will make a better impression and maybe people will want to follow what I'm doing. We'll see.  Sorry, the image is a tad crappy.  The follow up scans should be better.


Lastly, I finally started work on Baren Forum's Exchange #47. This is an open exchange of prints with Baren Forum members. The particular one I joined is relegated to the Moku Hanga technique and has a format of roughly 13"x 6". I have a show coming up in April on river themes so I chose the Chowanoke Crayfish as subject material. At first I designed it as a vertical orientation with a creek flowing down over various stones and about 6 crayfish perched atop with their claws lifted in the air as if dancing in the wind. I sat back and looked at it and it appeared severely Disney-ish to me. I totally erased every scrap of the image and went to a horizontal orientation. I know first hand that crayfish live under rocks and you have to carefully overturn them in a stream bed to find the little guys. I drew some stones and one with a lip that overhung. A single crayfish fit nicely under there. Wabi-sabi. The stone orientation and single crayfish feels more real to me. For the carving and printing I will take liberty with the water. I've really been into researching the Arts and Crafts movement lately and I'd like the give the water a glittering Gustave Klimt feel. We'll see what happens soon!  Again, crappy photo.  Pencil sketches never really translate well.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Raucous Auction Tomorrow!


Tomorrow afternoon is the Virginia Artist Book Center's annual fundraiser "Raucous Auction"!   Check out the official link:
Virginia Artist Book Center
It's a good opportunity to celebrate our new space and settle in as we shake the dust off our shoulders.  From 5:30-8:00pm a good time will be had by all and we'll try to raise some funds to keep our our type clean and presses moving!  The above poster was printed on the VABC Vandercook with wood and lead type that is part of the collection.  Ain't printmaking grand?


Here's a shot of the moving guys getting the VABC's C&P Job Press into the new space. At first I thought it was my press because I saw the characteristic inking disk at the top. (It looks like a big silver dinner plate.) But then I saw the network of metal feet at the bottom and realized it was my press' big brother instead. These things weigh a lot and are really hard to maneuver. Shake it don't break it boys. . .


And here's little ol' me at the Crozet Meadows "Fall Display of the Arts" last Saturday. I met a lot of really nice people and it really was a beautiful day for it. Charlie Tucei took this picture and headed up a lot of the effort behind the showing. He's got a great portfolio of photos and had a display of his photography. I really like the colors in my display. Maybe the pink flowers on my flour sack table clothes were a bit much but I'm a sucker for that type of stuff.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Crozet Meadows Fall Display of the Arts


I will be setting up a table with wonderful goodies for all to see and buy as treasures for holiday gifts or as treasures for yourself! Prices range from $5.00 to $75.00. I will also be bringing some of the blocks with me so that people can see some of the process of my craft. Come and experience the dying art of letterpress and woodblock printing!

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Bulls, Billy Goats, and Cork Stamps!

No, Pistoles Press has not died yet! I know it's been since March but I'm still in the game!
There has much that has transpired since my last post. I did finish printing my trilobites and squid prints and had a wonderful solo show at the McGuffey Art Center in Downtown Charlottesville, VA during July and August. I DID commit the cardinal sin of NOT posting about this here. Oops. There are reasons for this though. I do enjoy posting about the work I do but I found myself posting and documenting more than getting the art done. I was really feeling overwhelmed and burnt out towards the deadline for my show. Any artist will tell you putting together a solo show has the potential to leave one frizzled around the edges. But it was a great experience and I stood back for a little while and took a break.
In the meantime, VABC has moved it's location from the Ix Building on Elliot Ave. to underneath the Art Box in the Ivy Shopping Center. It's a move for the better but a smaller space and quite the crunch. I'll have to grab some photos to post!
As you can see above I have added two more gents to the collection of Farm People. The Bull is a suave character in his jet black suit and slick spats. The Billy goat is a dapper trickster in his seersucker suit and straw hat. I love his floppy ears! I've sketched out plans for the Nanny Goat but have yet to draw the cow. I can't decide between a "milk cow" concept or a "brown cow" concept. It's a bit hard to get around the "brown cow" concept when printed in black but I feel confident that people can recognize Jersey features from Holstein....maybe. On the other hand, I don't feel the need to render huge udders popping out from beneath a skirt hem! We'll just have to see how everything develops.
In other ventures, I've applied to do the Charlottesville Holiday Market this year. I've done the Farmer's Market a summer ago with good results. The experience was a fun one and the feeling from the place was really invigorating! I was hoping to peddle some cork stamps more so than the last time. In fact, most of my focus will be on them because they were way more popular than the prints. I did have some problems though. The first issue was that though the packaging was of my own design and was fun, it was tiring to create. I had measured and hand cut a template for a box and hand stamped my logo on it. Next you have to glue at least one side together and then later I found that you have to tape the bottom flap closed so it won't pop out and dump the stamp. To keep the stamp from rattling around in the box I wrapped it in tissue paper. All this creation and assemblage got old after about the 20th stamp. On top of that, after everything was finished and in a pretty display, people still wanted to take the stamp out and unwrap it before they decided they wanted to purchase it. I can understand that but it wore on the boxes if they didn't purchase. Lastly, after a single day of display out in the pretty spring sun, when I got home I realized that all of the stamps that didn't sell were severely faded. I didn't realize how fleeting stamp ink was in the sun! Some of the boxes I had to do over and that was really defeating.

So, time for a change. I needed a concept that looked nice and wasn't overly labor intensive. I also wanted something sustainable and a display that people could actually see what they were purchasing. I had a copious amount of cream card stock that I had purchased for bookmaking. I also had a set of Tuscan Ombree type from Hill&Dale Foundry that I will cherish forever. (They are an AMAZING foundry!) I also have a canister of red rubber based ink that will last me until Jesus comes home. (I hope he'll want some letterpress invitations to his tribulation soiree!) Lastly, I have some cool cotton sage colored twine that I've been keeping around forever. Put these all together and you have my new concept to try for displaying my cork stamps. The rubber based ink won't fade out in the sun. The paper and twine will decompose and can be recycled. The stamp is visible almost in the round and there is a sample of its image on the bottom. I'm hoping the design will work out as I rather like it and they are so much quicker than the old package. The only problem I foresee is the sample image which is still in stamp ink. If they don't sell, the sun will fade them over time. I'm willing to risk this though. I usually do letterpress runs of no less than 100 and if I have to replace them I've already printed 200. Wish me luck!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Things you neeb to know about printmaking


Here is an excellent example of a "type demon". I had to laugh out loud when I pulled this first proof. Just a simple matter of slipping that letter out to replace it with the right one but I'm always deathly afraid that I'll get tired and not catch stupid mistakes until I'm on the last print. Thankfully I had two other people in the studio working around me so I bugged them to proof read and suffer through my poetry enough to say there were no more spelling errors.

Catherine Moore was working on a really neat project that is somewhat similar to mine in playing with how type is arranged to create mood and flow. I was really fascinated by here set up and it was neat to see that and hear her and Garrett Queen talking about soundscapes. People really do take sound for advantage and everything from pattering rain to the slow rumble of a train down the tracks has its place.

Above is a picture of her arrangement of wood type on the VABC Vandercook.

Meanwhile, I was neebing all the help I could get. I love my set of Fransiscan Type but I have since learned the valuable lesson that 16pt. font was not common at all. I thought I could borrow some spacing material for this project from the VABC but they never owned a set of 16pt. font so had no reason to ever acquire 16pt. spacing material. Thankfully, Dave Churchman of Sterling Type Foundry was there to save the day and was able to get me some. It wasn't much but my job has been small so far. I still need to find a good way of storing spacing material besides those plastic hardware bins. I HATE those things. In the mean time, my Lichee Black Tea tin now devoid of yummy beverage product will serve nicely as a repurposed spacing material storage unit.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Finished Squids


Scanners never seem to do some images any justice and of course this scan doesn't really portray the soft blue glow of dots when viewed from some angles but I'm posting about the completion of my Bioluminescent Squid edition. I did the last run this past saturday and dusted the prints. The photo below better describes the effect of the interference powder.

Also finished and flourished with my asian chops are the Anti-Squids!

There was a flurry of activity at VABC this past saturday. There is a Vandercook press that is getting worked on and Garrett had all his tools out to do the job. It was neat to see the inside guts of the machine.

Josef was pulling some etchings off of a really neat material he found. There were no acid baths necessary. Everything was done in dry point and he did some really beautiful proofs of a gnarled and winding pine tree, a sitting bear, and this wonderful mushroom seen here.

Not pictured was Frank who was busily sketching at a nearby table. It's nice to work with peers on similar ventures. You can take breaks from printing to see what everyone else is up to!

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Balizoma Prints


This stony faced fellow is another in my trilobite series. His name is Balizoma and I printed him up this afternoon. I carved him one orientation on the block and then decided at the last minute to print him up another way. I hope it will create more interest in the final image when I add in the letterpress.
I got lazy saturday night and ended up paying for it today. I dampened the paper with my misting bottle instead of waiting for my dosa brush to soak. When I went to check the paper before printing it was dishearteningly warm. The was JUST enough water (we're probably talking microns here) to allow for a print run but I was still chasing the paper with misted newsprint and holding my breath when burnishing. Since I print on my desktop upstairs now, the upper part of the house is warm and dry in the winter and just breathing on the paper while printing (when it is this dry) can dry it out. They came out okay in the end but I learned my lesson and will be patient enough to use my dosa brush next time.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Parade of Ghosts


This past friday saw the completion of the last reduction run for the bioluminescent squid. I did not have time to do the anti-squid but he will catch up soon enough. I would like to complete them in their entirety next weekend but I'm not sure they will be dry enough. The above picture is in VABC as I was pulling them off the Vandercook. I let them cure like that for about 8 hours and then came in to take them down to make room for another potential artist to hang. I was thinking about stringing a line of clothespins at home upstairs so that they can cure for a few days in the air. There are a total of 4 reduction layers of ink on there and it must be completely dry before I do the last pass of tintbase with luminescent powder or everything will turn iridescent. Pretty but not the desired effect.

Here is one of the squids hanging to dry. The registration holes are taped to the back with easy remove tape. To make it "easier" I carved the registration pins into the block and once they were finished and I was heavy into carving and printing the reduction work, maybe they did make registration less painful. But they were a pain in the butt to carve. I'll probably begin the Bioluminescent Octopus print and use the regular registration pin jig and with I had hand carved them instead. LOL!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Spots and Templates


Snow in the wilderness is a beautiful thing. Snow in the wilderness with adult obligations such as a day job, lack of a wood stove, an untrustworthy heater/power source, and a looming deadline for show.....I'll have to think of an appropriate word for that...when I have time.
Complaints aside, spots are done! Here we have one spotted squid suit ready for the final run of the reduction process. After that comes the pretty tint base and interference powder dusting and then both the bioluminescent squid AND the anti-squid are done!! It will be nice to add two new editions of work to the completion list and feel a sense of victory. Finding perfect frames only enhances the experience!
In other pursuits, I'm cutting a special jig for the letterpress on my Harpetida print. The poem talks about our little specimen basking in the warm shallows on an afternoon four hundred and sixteen million years ago. I wanted to print up the text in waves that lap past its shell. I kind of wish there weren't seven waves to cut but I'll just hang out with my little jig saw and a hot cup of tea one afternoon and get it done like always. I just know it will print up great. I also found some stars to accent the type and it will be really beautiful to see it all done!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Closing in


The skin patches on my squid continue to spread like an infection down the length of the color block. My poor little gouge is starting to tell me more and more that honing is not enough anymore. I keep telling it that if it holds out until the end of squid's little tentacles I will sit down with the water stones for a proper session of blade restoration. This carving is tedious but not as bad as the first block done with teeny tiny spots. The larger spots make for faster coverage. It's nice to sit back sometimes and survey the progress one has made with carving. Now to rest the eyeballs before trotting off to the day job...

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Two Posts in One Day?!


Just closing in on a personal goal. I wanted to complete the mantle of the squid in one day and I managed to do just that! It helps to have a driving force behind you when endeavoring on an arduous venture so I highly recommend Respighi's "Fountains of Rome" followed by sprinklings of Tom Waits. "Falling Down" and "Metropolitan Glide" should do the trick.
I had to get rid of all the eye parts and turn the skin into patches. The large pale orb definitely stares at you the whole time you are carving and I have a feeling it will continue to do so until I get to that part and it too will dissolve into a patterned patchwork. That will have to wait for another day.

Sparkling Squid!


So, I've been on this kick of trying to finish or at least surge ahead on the numerous projects that lie ahead. The inundation of snow and rain here has more than inhibited my process of finishing but the one good thing about piling on the projects is that if you get flooded in and can't get to the studio to print, you can always do design work or carve on another project! Here is the "key" block for my reduction series of bioluminescent animals. I have finished the mist of photophors that will be draped over his body in a shimmer of interference blue powder. The eye and side fins on his head still have to be carved off as they were just left there for registration purposes. Yes, it is curious to have a key block for a reduction print but it is the layers of "color" beneath him that will act as the reduction.

Here is a shot of the first run of the reduction block on my Vandercook. I decided that not only a blue bioluminescent squid would look great but also an "anti-squid" series would be fun. I have some paper that is made with bits of bark and large fiber tossed in it. A luminescent squid printed up with layers of tint base extender with a hint of black and a dark silver dusting my look neat. Here is a shot of that paper over the first run of the reduction block. Those paper registration tabs were the HUGEST pain in the @ss to put on. I had to measure the exact middle of the paper and then the exact middle of the tabs and then line those up to tape down. Even then the registration wasn't spot on on some of them but the joy of the bark paper was I could see through it to register the bottom if it wasn't exact.

In past prints, one of the things I tried to eliminate was inconsistency but as I got exposed to more techniques in printmaking and more work from other artists I grew envious of certain textures and wanted to try some of these things myself. I really enjoy the fine texture of the wood that has been picked up in this oil based print. The ingres paper in the blue series works well with this as it gives the illusion of deep ocean with its dark waters containing much detritus and it helps the effect of translucency in the white squid.


Of course, using handmade paper with bits of bark and larger fiber tossed in is a total embrace of inconsistency and I actually sought out which position and side of the paper would capture the most texture when printing up the "anti-squid" series. I wanted the appearance of this animal floating around in an unknown ether that may or may not exist in a dimension between worlds. In quantum physics there is a theory that there are 13 "layers" that make up the physical world we know and they are referred to as "branes" (short for membrane) but I thought the title "brane squid" sounded stupid. "Anti-squid" gives more of a reference to the theories of dark energy and dark matter. Not in the "bad" or "evil" sense but more on the "opposites" sense. Go read some on CERN.....

Sadly, I forgot my camera at this point and have printed up two more layers on this work. The picture below relays the latest layer on the series. I love how the eye came out and the lack of fins on the body at this point really makes them pop out in the prints! I now have to dissolve this entire piece into a flurry of "skin patches" that will be slightly bigger than the sparkling photophors. After I print that up it will be time to set up for the key block and my dusting hood for the final magic! Can't wait!

Monday, January 4, 2010

Goal!


Well, the goal was 5 editions but I'm calling 4 out of 5 not bad! You'll notice that the images are not all centered. My good friend and artist Amanda Johnson suggested that I not center all of them because it would add interest and movement and I think she's right. I especially like Ensifer at the bottom left hand corner because he looks like he's going to crawl right off the page. Well, the first hurtle of printing is over but up next comes the type setting. I have a set of Fransiscan type that I purchased from NA Graphics and I've been dying to use it but god knows where I packed it during the move and I'll be nuts trying to find it but at least I might get a few more boxes resolved, bleh. The VABC might have some tasty accents like stars and such to add to the mix so I'm really excited to finish these out.
Now, back to carving squid photophors....

Sunday, January 3, 2010

The Cold Push


After wading through a New Year's Day hangover, I set about my goal of beginning the final printing of my Trilobite Series for the show I have due in April. My goal was 5 editions for each trilobite I had the color block and key block finished for an edition of 30 prints each (so I would have to print 35 all together to account for mistakes). This was to be completed by the end of the weekend. I already had the paper cut and resting in my plastic humidor box. I had begun the printing back in October when I was intent on printing with my soil ink. That would have been such a great print. Alas, it was not in the stars and so rather than waste resources I dried out the remaining paper and set the project aside to deal with the hell of moving out of my studio. I still have the "ink" I processed from soil. Maybe one day I will print with it.

I got up this past Saturday and set up my printing station/drafting table. I have a canister of premade McClain's brand nori paste but when I reached for it I saw that it was getting on the low side. I decided that if I'm going to go with the Amazonite and Malachite pigments that I might as well roll out the process and cook up my own paste too. I had purchased a bag of rice starch that I keep in a cobalt blue apothecary jar and it that makes it feel like my little treasure. I'm still keeping an eye out for a suitable steamer trunk to keep all my preground pigments in so I can really pile on the atmosphere. I trotted down to the kitchen with my tattered copy of "Japanese Book Binding" by Kojiro Ikegami and my mysterious blue jar and my husband asked if I was cooking up potions today. I should have taken a picture of the nori steaming and bubbling away on my stove but the truth of the matter is I didn't want to photograph the spaghetti sauce stains that were splattered on the stove top as well!

Now, there have been several reasons that I have put off printing these little guys in the past. The number one reason was "What if the soil pigment didn't work?" and that reason has been scratched off because low and behold it didn't. The next was "I need to spend more time sketching and carving." True but time is a wasting and deadlines they are a coming. There was also "What if the paper doesn't work or the Malachite or Amazonite pigments don't work out? What if your registration is a nightmare?!?!" Well, the only way to know is to just get down to it.
I had forgotten that I had already printed up the color block for Norwoodia in Amazonite and those prints had been dried. Even though my kento should be on point I was nervous about rewetting prints that had been dry for a few months and expecting the key block to just line up like magic.....but you know what? It did. Yay! I took that as a good omen and so I began trucking along with my little print set up cranking out my army of 35 Norwoodia.

Here is Norwoodia peeking out from under his blanket of Kozo.

I was impressed at how deep and rich the Amazonite color was. It is a mineral native to Virginia and can be found in jewelry but Daniel Smith has taken to grinding it into pigment and I would have never thought that the color would be so vibrant. The light fastness is supposed to be superb and I'm glad because I'm always expecting colors like that to photo-degrade. Sadly, I don't think the pigment was from Virginia. I think it was from Russia but at least it is the same mineral.
Though the colors were as I expected them, I found them lack luster for some reason. In painting class, I remember being warned repeatedly that the colors change when they dry so that don't appear as vibrant in their dry phase as when with their wet phase. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked the prints more when they dried than when they were wet. The pigment took on a soft glow and lost the dull flatness it had when wet. I wonder if this is due to in part because they are mineral pigments. I'm more willing to bet that it is that special magic that Japanese Washi paper possesses. Colors just bounce and glow within it.
I was almost finished with the Norwoodia edition when it began to get cold in my little room. I thought this was due to handling all the wet paper and ink but upon inspecting the thermostat it was confirmed that our heat was on the fritz. Some people don't think 56 degrees is cold but I HATE being cold and consider the thermostat being on 72 a sacrifice for the sake of the planet. I'm getting a wood stove the first chance I get. Anyways, I felt like this would be another potential excuse. "Oops, the heat's not working pack it in and save it for another day that we can think of something else to procrastinate about." I had already wet all this paper and cooked up fresh nori. It was just time to make a kettle of hot tea and keep on truck'n.

Up next were the little tiny trilobites called Angnostoidea. These guys were somewhat of a pain because I was actually printing a grouping 6 trilobites and so had to watch the registration. Even though most of the time the Malachite (lighter shade) pigment printed up dark it was hard to see on the plate as it was very pale and I was worried that I didn't have enough pigment on. I'd add more and then worry if I was flooding the block.

At the end of the day, I had my two little armies of Agnostoidea and Norwoodia and I called it quits because my fingers were frozen. The next day I printed up one of my favorite trilobites Ensifer.

All of its wandering whipping appendages made me cringe with the registration ahead but all went well and I am happy with my small army of Ensifers.

I printed the color block for another of my trilobites but ran out of steam....and heat for the day. But tomorrow morning the trilobites and I will emerge well rested and ready for another day of printing!