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The Making of Autumn Hills ![]()
So Bob spends a few hours on the antique paper cutter, cutting
about 530 sheets of paper: 150 for each of the three blocks,
plus about 75 pieces of scrap paper, for trial prints. I am
happy to relinquish the satisfaction of paper-cutting to Bob the
sturdy Rhino, as the cutter requires power that a 123-pound
Laura Chicken does not possess. Unless she wants to cut 5 sheets
at a time and finish in time for Easter.
I set up these prints and gaze at them from 10 feet away, as you would if they were hanging over your fireplace. Many of those little white shapes are hard to see from that distance. Resolve to make shapes a bit larger in subsequent carvings, and get to work carving out all the shapes that need to stay yellow. Plan to print on Friday.
Carve, carve,
carve. Friday comes and goes. Ok, I’ll print on Sunday. OMG this
is tedious, and a mental workout to try to picture how these
shapes will look as negative spaces, printed backwards, with the
other colors I haven’t printed yet on top. Hurray for the Robert
B Parker “Spenser” series of audio books, which keep me going
through this marathon. Spenser is one tough dude. Me, too.
Former commercial printer Bob convinces me to print orange next instead of the light green I had planned. Much fun to mix it: tons of yellow, a smear of red, and a pea-sized dab of blue, to make it a bit more earthy.
This time it’s only 5 ½ hours. No registration problems, after the initial tweaking with trial prints. No inking problems, after adjusting the packing. The color is perfect. The press is on good behavior. The prints look great. Slightly shaken by this. Knock on wood several times throughout.
Now carving out all shapes that should stay orange, in order to print on Friday. Yes, Friday, no time for delays. I have my sketch to refer to, but with each successive printing, “Autumn Hills” strays a bit more from the initial sketch, taking on its own character. Try to think of this as the miracle of art being born, and knock some wood again.
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