Since I started drawing with letterpress in mind, it has become a different thing to me. All my life drawing has been the end, but now it feels like a means to the end. For example… I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but I have no intention of drawing the other half of this butterfly. I plan on scanning it, copying and flipping the wing, and pasting it onto the other side of the body.
Cheating? Maybe. Hell of a lot easier? Definitely. While I’m confessing, I also did this for the moth on my wedding programs and invitations.
In a fine art sense, I would consider this to be totally against the rules. But in this case, I think for me the art is really going to be about the printing process, everything before that will simply be preparation.
Although it doesn’t feel quite the same, I’m really enjoying sketching again. I’m spending a lot of my lunch breaks drawing in the park or in cafes, and it really makes me wonder how I got away from this part of myself for so long. Here are a few more pages from my sketchbook for my first letterpress project on my own press:
My first card is going to be an arrangement of white things. Here are some of them.
There will be two plates, one with white ink for the color of the objects, and the other with black ink for the lines of the objects.
Alex took my broken treadle to a welder today, and they said it would be fixed by tomorrow. Looks like we’ll be up and running soon!