Evolution of a Print

I have been making a lot of things in my printmaking and metals classes...mostly just to keep my hands busy. For printmaking, I've been working very quickly on a lot of small editions. I get to work independently on the intaglio process. I decided, for my first print, to keep it easy and bring a sketch from my art journal to life. I say easy because it is formally similar to everything I was creating two years ago. Drawing lines without any representational intention has become an unexplainable comfort for me much like laying in the grass at a park in the warm sun or eating pasta and meatballs with family on Sunday afternoon.



Here is the original sketch from a new art journal I made. The book is is bound in the elongated horizontal format that you see here. I didn't crop that from a larger page. I wanted to see what kind of drawings that layout would bring. It seems I just made...piano keys or something.



Then I made a drawing to fit the plate I was planning on doing drypoint on.



This is the print on plain white intaglio paper.



And here it is on my own handmade paper.

Everyone seems to like the handmade paper one but I'm partial to the clean white paper. I cannot decide. Which is probably why I haven't actually created a real edition of it yet. I'll figure it out later.

Also, more good news, I have completed all 42 pages of Chapter 4 of my thesis. There are lots of great images and tables of all the data I collected over winter break. It is satisfying having it all in one place presented in a nicely organized manner. Two more chapters to go.

I will post more prints and my most recent metals creation once I get good photos and scans of them all.