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.