I’m glad it’s Leap Year

The extra day is much needed. This week’s progress has been mixed, a frustrating letterpress session, some quite interesting research for the thesis and some trial seed drawings and prints to be made into small trial books.It is all rather small at the moment.

Playing with shapes and colours and a few concertina book ideas.

     

Below left are the first proofs of the little linos for the seed book. It will be a very slim volume, only 10 pages, but just enough to create a book block or two, printing will be a mixture of hand printed lino, InDesign  printed text and them maybe some letterpress. My biggest triumph is getting everything set up to print a small booklet. Below right are some of the finished pages. Text printed first on my very cheap Inkjet via InDesign then the linos hand printed.

 

The letterpress didn’t work that well as we only use the proofing press for trials. Paper, pressure, inking etc all have such an effect and it’s hard to get good results to start with, but I am getting quicker at setting up the type. Below some big numbers, a small amount of set text and inkjet printing

 

I am managing to keep my lino printing clean now but not so the letterpress work. Everything seems to get smudged.Its mainly because I am unsure about exactly what I am doing and faff about a bit. Letterpress seems to respond best to firm and decisive actions and deft movements. It will all improve, I am sure ..:)