Sunday, November 30, 2008

Halfway there


Letterpress printing is always slow, but sometimes it's really slow. Especially when you create the design yourself, from scratch. I've been working on this project since early October, and I still only have one of the two colours printed.


These berries were pretty enough to be inspiring, so I made several sketches of them one sunny afternoon.


Berry helped by bringing out her crayons and working alongside me. "You drawing a plant, mum-mum? That pretty."

Several weeks passed while I refined the sketches, scanned them, created the final design in Illustrator, and sent the separations away to have plates made.


I needed the berries again to mix the right shade of ink. I got it, even though it looks orange on the press!


Each colour has to be printed separately on the press, with a complete cleaning in between runs. I've only printed the red berries so far, and I'm still looking for enough time to print the leaves – so I can't show you anything!


I promise when they're finished, I'll share.

.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Must admit I have complete and total letterpress envy, recently was looking back a stuff from school, too long ago and saw letterpress and silk screen items I had done. I miss them was looking up information on both and found your blog. I am thinking a letterpress is totally in my future. Great information thanks. From the American living in Australia. Cheers