The "Oh Crap I'm Overdrawn" Pay-What-You-Want Print Sale

Originally this was going to be the "Oh Crap I have a Self-Employment Tax Bill" sale, but circumstances have, well, changed. So Yeah. Basically, if you were thinking about buying some of my work, this is a really, really (*really*) good time. You get prints (and other goodies) for cheap, and I can start digging myself out of the hole.

Here's how it works: I'll post pictures and specs for prints (and these are all hand-pulled prints made in limited editions, and not digital prints), artist's books, jewellery, and other odds and ends of art. If you want one, or several, comment on the post with your country and postal code or state, or send me an email (to anagramforink at gmail) with your mailing address. As long as you cover shipping (unless you live in Nova Scotia and want to pick them up from my house or from the Dawson Printshop in Halifax), the price of the print is whatever you want to pay.

I'm going to put the original retail for each print in the info, but that's not to get people to give me more money, it's just there as a reference for folks who want to know. Really, cover shipping and you can have the prints free (though I hope you'll chip in a little something I can give the bank).

Shipping costs will vary quite a lot depending on the size of the print and whether it's shipped rolled or flat. Tiny prints can go for as little as a couple of bucks, while bigs ones can be $20 or $30 (or more if you want tracking). The more prints you buy, the less shipping per print. When you send your address, I'll give you a shipping cost (as determined by the Canada Post shipping calculator and rounded up to the nearest dollar).

This'll be first come, first served -- and I'll include the number of each print I have available so you can figure out from the comments if there are any left -- but if you already know something you want before I post it, go ahead and email me or comment on this post, and I'll set it aside for you.

There are a few prints I won't be including in the sale -- though I may put them up at a discount. If you're buying anything else, though, it might be a good time to save on shipping. These will mostly be really recent work.

I prefer payment via PayPal (I'll let you know which email to send it to when I give you the shipping cost), but if you're local, cash and cheques are good, too, and I can even do VISA/Mastercard via Square for locals (in person so I can swipe your card) or PayPal for farther away folks.

Finally, if you know anyone who might want some cool science, nature, and history inspired art, please pass this along. Purchases from my Etsy shops will also help) though a lot of what's in there will eventually make it to this sale. Even digital print purchases or buying my ebooks will help in the long term (though not immediately). I'll try to get all the prints posted today, but it may take a couple of days. I have to dig through my big box to see what I have, and some of them will need to be photographed.

Edited to add:
You don't have to tell me how much you're paying when you tell me what you want to buy -- I'll send you a list of shipping options once I know what you want and where you want it sent. Then just send your payment via PayPal (or let me know how else you want to pay) with a note to say which shipping option you choose. As long as the amount covers the shipping, I'll send out your prints.

Here's What's For Sale

• lithographs
• intaglio prints 1
• intaglio prints 2
• relief prints and letterpress
• artist's books
• blank books
• jewellery and original art (plus commission info)
• one more original art piece

Recent Letterpress Work (Or, I Am Not Dead)

So much for my goal of posting something every week. I don't even really have the excuse of being busy. Which isn't to say I haven't been busy. I have. Just not so busy I couldn't post something. But anyway.

I am writing lots of fiction, and planning some other fun things. I've been making a few things, like this entirely non-letterpress item:

Available from one of my Etsy shops, if you're interested.

As for letterpress things, I finally got the "Spring" card in the four seasons series done, leaving just the "Autumn" one, which I hope to get done soon. The bulk of these are still in the Dawson Printshop, waiting for me to trim them down to size, but they are printed, at least.

I also played around with some wood type (and a linocut) while I was teaching (not during class time, of course, but while waiting for my students to arrive). I started with this little card:

Then did this one:

And then this:

You can probably tell I printed the first colour on the next card right after printing the second colour on the previous card, to reduce the number of times I had to clean the press. I do love printing these simple cards with vintage type and translucent colours, and I have plenty of ideas for more. I'm thinking "Thank You" and "Happy Birthday" cards should be next, since those are things people often ask about.

Right now I'm working on a book cover for my novel Reindeer Girl, which will be serialized by JukePop Serials starting in September, but I'll do a whole post on that once the picture is done.

The Vanishing Bestiary 1: Dodo

Friday afternoon I started on the test illustration I mentioned last post that I wanted to do, to see if I could get enough detail in linocut for the illustrations for The Vanishing Bestiary. By the time I went to bed, I had a good start on the drawing, and by Saturday afternoon I had something I was happy with (if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you may have seen this first image already):

Next, I needed to transfer it to the linoleum, which I did with good old-fashioned carbon paper (I believe it's still possible to buy it at Staples, but I have an ancient box that somebody gave me many, many years ago). I actually began by scanning the drawing, flipping it in Photoshop (since I wanted the final image to be facing left, like the original drawing), and printing it full-size on my laser printer. Then I used the printout and the carbon paper for the transfer. Finally, I went over it again on the linoleum with a hard pencil. The lines from the carbon paper are pretty stable, but I wanted to make sure I had all the details and smoothed all the lines, as it's very easy to get confused when cutting lino.

Above is the traced-over scan, the carbon paper (look closely and you can see where the transfer process left the image of the dodo in the carbon), and the lino. At this point, I had only gone over the head with pencil; the rest is still just the carbon transfer.

Cutting this image was easier than usual in a way. I didn't have to think too hard about what to cut and what to leave, because skeletons are white, so I could just sort of draw the skeleton with my cuts, if that makes any sense. Of course, I did have to remember to leave lines between elements, and there was a lot of small detail, so it was not at all easy in other ways. The final task was to cut out the silhouette of the animal, since I don't want any lino residue printing around it. I may or may not cut a second plate to make some sort of background in another colour, but for now it'll just be simple.

For the first proof, I used some water-based block printing ink I had kicking around, and immediately regretted it. I remember now why I hate the stuff. It was pretty much drying as I rolled it on, and it refused to go on at all evenly. And to top it all off, it pulled some of the newsprint off the proof (you can see it stuck to the tail in the image above). So then I used some rather aged rubber-based ink, and had problems with that as well, for reasons I haven't determined--possibly it was just too close to being dry, with too much oil leached out. Finally I pulled out a tin of truly ancient, but still very good, proofing ink I inherited when I was helping clean out the Dawson Printshop. It may be older than I am, but it still spreads like warm buttercream icing. The proofs I made weren't perfect (for one, I didn't clean up the rubber-based ink thoroughly enough, and for two, flat areas are hard to print well on my little tabletop proof press).

All in all, I'm very pleased. I hope to get some time before teaching on Wednesday to print a small edition (as prints, not for the final book, which I'll do once I have all the images cut and figure out what size to make the pages). I'll pop them in my Etsy shop for sale, too. Oh, and I think I'm going to make myself a t-shirt with this one.

Coelacanth: Living Fossil Birthday Card

So here's another one of my recent lino pieces finished.

The actual linocut is one I made several years ago to go with some hand-set type, and I've been wanting to use it again for a card. Here's the inside (also hand-set metal type):

If you're unfamiliar with the reference, the coelacanth is a big, ugly fish that was thought to have been extinct for thousands of years until one turned up in a fisherman's catch in the late 1930s. Since then, it's often been used as an example of a "living fossil."

I am wondering if I should take along some blank inserts with me to the craft fair next week, in case anyone likes the card but not the insides.

Anyway, I only printed a small number for now, because I didn't have many sheets of this particular paper, which was a batch I made to use up some pulp. It's half recycled rag, half goldenrod, but the rag had been frozen and didn't spread out well in the vat, which created the blobby look. And because the goldenrod was the end of the batch, there were a lot of stem bits it it, making the paper brittle and crunchy. I also had problems with the paper sticking to the plate and leaving bits behind, so I had to wipe off the lino and re-ink after every print.

I'll see how these sell before I print more, at which point I'll use a different paper.

Linocuts in Progress

Yeah, I got a bit swamped with dayjob stuff and with trying to keep up my fiction writing, too, so I haven't posted here in ages. But I have been working on a few things.

I've been teaching letterpress for Extended Studies at NSCAD for the past six weeks or so and the final class is tomorrow. I teach the class again starting in early May. I've been trying to sneak in a little printing time of my own before each class--last week I printed some invitations for a client, but I also got a chance to proof a dragon linocut I made off and on over the last . . . well, too long to tally up, but a long time. Then I managed to leave all the proofs in the shop, so I don't have any pictures to show you. But I will after I bring them home tomorrow.

In the meantime, my worktable has this on it:

Wee little linocuts that I will print on my own handmade paper to make cards. The top one is goldenrod, and it will also have a yellow block, and maybe a green one, depending on how ambitious I feel. It'll be printed on 50% recycled cotton rag / 50% goldenrod paper. Here's a closeup:

And the bottom one is of course a scarab. It's an original design based on a variety of ancient Egyptian sources. I've had a big fascination with beetles for a while, but especially so now that I've got a character growing in my head who has a peculiar affinity for beetles.

I'm especially fascinated by the combination of scarabs and falcons, not just with the wings, but with the big falcon feet, too. Here's a peek into my process, with the original sketch, the tracing paper I used to transfer it to the lino and then used to play with colours, and the lino for the black layer.

I'm planning (if I have time) to do this in two versions: a two- or three-colour one on a greeting card, and then a six-colour limited edition print (black, green, blue, yellow, red, and metallic gold).

And, if you're curious about the beetle character, she's in this short story by my alter ego Nic Silver, available for Amazon Kindle:

Pop-Up!

The last class I taught this year for NSCAD Extended Studies was a pop-up holiday card workshop over a whole weekend. I ended up with only three students (though four registered), so it was an intimate class, but it meant I was able to give each student more one-on-one time if they wanted it. I'm notoriously bad at taking photographs of my classes, but I did take some pictures of a prototype I started during the class--at first to demonstrate the process and then for something to do when the students reached the point where they didn't need my immediate help (I love that, but it does make me feel a little useless).

Because I wanted this card to be the sort of thing that the recipient could use as a holiday decoration year after year, I needed it to be able to lay flat and stay flat when opened. So instead of cardstock covers, I built it like a book. That also allowed it to be a more substantial-seeming gift, and meant it didn't even need wrapping.

I was cutting this quite quickly from a very rough sketch (so I didn't bore the students while they watched the process), so a lot of the final shape is more-or-less freehand. So the deer are a proportioned a little oddly. You can also probably tell that my knife was not quite as sharp as it should have been.

I really like, though, how the simple white shapes layer on each other to create something with depth. You can, of course, use coloured paper, or draw or paint on the shapes, but I wanted something simple and elegant. White-on-white is simple and elegant, right?

Things Printed and In Progress

It's only mid-October, but the Halifax Crafters winter sale will be here soon, so I'm madly trying to get at least some of the things I had planned finished and ready to sell. I still don't know if I'll get a calendar done or not. I hope so, and I have a great idea, but with so many other things to finish . . . well, we'll just have to see how it goes.

But I did get one of the four seasons cards done the other day. I still have to trim and fold them, which I will do this evening while I'm hanging out in the printshop for Nocturne (if you're in Halifax, stop by; we're open 6 to midnight and will be doing demos, selling our wares, and helping folks print a keepsake on a vintage Vandercook Universal 1 proof press). I have the plates made for the winter card, and almost have the files for autumn and spring ready to send to film, but summer, at least, is printed:

My letterpress class has been going really well, and last class we had reached the stage where the students don't need my help very often. So while they were busy setting type, I assembled some wood type for the first in a series of fun and silly posters I have planned. I decided to use some of rather venerable, already-cut paper that's been around the shop for eons, and just throw the type on the press and see what happened. Because one press had black ink on it and the other had red, those were the colours I used. Then I added the linocut at home yesterday.

If I were to print this again, I'd shift the red type to the left just a little, to line it up with the black type, which would also put it just about in the centre of the page. I'd probably also print it on off-white paper, but I like the black and red--very bookish colours. Both this poster and the summer card will be for sale tonight, and eventually in my Etsy shop.

And one more fun thing that won't be ready for tonight, but will be done for the Halifax Crafters sale, is this (ignore the smudged line of type--I was trying to proof without actually setting up my press, so it shifted):

It will be available both as a little print on my own handmade paper, as above (it's just a little smaller than half letter size), and on the cover of hand-bound blank pamphlet journals. Also, the type won't be smudged or crooked. It's a linocut with hand-set wood and metal type.

I have lots more in the works, but that's all that's ready to show you.

4 Seasons Cards (Well, Two of Them): Summer and Winter

Here are some digital proofs for cards I've been working on lately. You may recognize one of them, though I've changed the colours (they're not quite right yet, but I'll work them out when I actually print them).

Summer:

And Winter (the raven may be a little smaller in the final version):

Of course, I still have Spring and Autumn to go, but it's taking longer than anticipated to do the foliage images. I also realized that I'm not happy with the oak trees I drew for spring, so I'll have another go at it later--hopefully in time to send the files when I send the one for the papermaking/printing job I have coming up in late October.

Then I just have to find time to print them all (Summer is 1/3 done, at least).

Printmaking Progress . . . Or Lack Thereof

This morning I had to check and make sure I still had some copies of prints available before renewing them in my Etsy shop, and that led to making a proper list of all my prints and edition sizes and which copies were left (I still have to go through the Giant Box of Prints to double-check what's left). In the process, I discovered it's been a dismally long time since I did any real printmaking.

The last lithograph I made was in late 2007. I'm not the biggest fan of lithography, though it is certainly a great way of printing book contents. (And when I say I'm not a fan, it really just means it's not my favourite printmaking process; I still like it very much.) That was The Evolution of Flight:

The most recent intaglio (etching/aquatint/mezzotint/drypoint/engraving/etc) print I made was Variations on a Sea Jelly, in 2008. Intaglio I miss quite a lot, and a recent idea I had for a big series of prints would be intaglio, on copper, and the plates would actually become part of the work, too. I'm not quite ready to say more about it, because I'm still working it through in my brain, and trying to figure out how to make it happen.

I do have one in-progress intaglio project I can work on in the meantime, because it's printed and just needs some hand-colouring, but it's a small project and will be quickly completed. Just before I did the sea jelly above, I also did a series of tiny zinc-plate etching/engravings with hand-colouring, and when I printed them, just for fun I did a few on soft brown paper in dark brown ink. All six of the fish are on one page, and instead of separating them as I did in the coloured versions, I'm thinking of leaving them as-is, and then just adding either shading all in browns, to keep the sepia theme, or else is very, very muted colours (suggestions are welcome).

As for relief printing, the last thing I did that wasn't entirely letterpress was WANTED: Wm Morris, in 2008. Of course, I have done a lot of letterpress images that count as printmaking, even if most of them also happen to be in the form of greeting cards.

I dug around in my in-progress stuff and pulled out a few linocuts that I started and haven't finished. One will be a triptych of eight-inch square prints inspired by some gorgeous photographs by Rosamund Purcell. They're going to be reductive, which means I do minimal cutting and print the first colour (in this case, a pale cream), then cut, print, cut, print, all from the same element, until I have as many colours as I want. This set will all be in a range of siennas (I think--too lazy to go dig out the tin of ink I bought especially for this project), starting with paler and working to darker. It's hard to see what I visualize, but here's the first bit, set aside right as I was ready to print it:

I think I can print this at home on my little proof press, though it would certainly be easier and faster to do it in the Dawson Printshop. I may take these with me the next time the Letterpress Gang meets and see if I can take a bit of time to print colour 1.


I also have a linocut I started as a demo piece for the kids' printmaking summer camp I taught last year. I worked at it on and off during the week, but only when the kids were busy with their own stuff, so I didn't get it finished. I planned a second plate with a simple repeating pattern to sit in behind, only where the dragon is, to give it colour. I've left this out on my worktable for now, in the hopes I'll steal some time to work on it.

And finally, a bit of sillyness: a t-shirt idea I did during the same summer camp that I didn't get a chance to actually print on a t-shirt (I did another one that says "professional geek" that I did print on a t-shirt; I wore it at the last craft fair I did and got a nice complement).

I call it "apeshirt."

Letterpress: Wayzgoose and Sea Things

If you're in Halifax this coming Saturday, how about stopping by the Dawson Printshop (right at the end of Granville Street, in the N block of the NSCAD campus) for our Wayzgoose?

There will be food, possibly music, presses running so you can try your hand at printing a souvenir, and lots of cool stuff for sale, including our brand-new limited edition printing press posters.

I'll also be selling some of my letterpress stuff there, including the finished sea things cards:

Nautilus above, and octopus below.

All of them are hand-letterpress printed (from polymer plates made from my own drawings), then hand-watercoloured.

Sea anemone above, sea jelly below.

I'll also be adding these to my Etsy shop shortly (unless the unlikely happens and I sell out this weekend).

Tentacle and Carapace

"Tentacle and Carapace: a letterpress printed calendar of sea creatures" is my hand-printed calendar for 2011. I'm so glad I had it finished before the Halifax Crafters fair this year, as I sold quite a few (last year I only had a few pages done of my flying machines calendar and though I had them on display, I couldn't actually sell any).

All of the names of the months are printed from vintage wood type in the collection of the Dawson Printshop at NSCAD, where I still do most of my printing.

The days of the week and dates of each month are printed from polymer plates. The type is Eccentric, with Cochin for the subtitle on the front.

The sea creatures were also printed from polymer plates, made from my own drawings. (If you read this blog much, or follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, you may remember me writing about working on them.)

If you'd like to purchase a copy of the calendar, you'll find it on Etsy and ArtFire, or you can email me at anagramforink at gmail dot com.

Making Progress Slowly

 
The Halifax Crafters Winter . . . um, I can't remember what it's called this year, but it's the funkiest craft fair in town, and it's coming up very soon (next weekend) so I am in a mad frenzy to get everything done. I've spent the last couple of days working on a big batch of book jewellery, and it's still not done!

Here's what it looks like so far:

Those are the Japanese bindings, all done and ready for their hardware. It looks like such a tiny pile, now, but there are 26 pendant size and 34 earring size tiny books in there. Here are the English bindings, not done:

I'll be changing gears a little bit today, to print some more gift tags on my Kelsey parlour press here at home, and getting paper ready to print business cards and book jewellery cards in the Dawson Printshop tomorrow before the Letterpress Gang meeting.

As for cards, I've printed all I'm going to get done this year, and am just waiting on envelopes and polybags (fingers crossed that they will make their way swiftly from Ontario to here, or else I will be stealing bags and envelopes from other, non-holiday, cards). The calendars are printed and just need their final trim and hole-punch, which will happen tomorrow. They need polybags, too, which are also on order.

The other task this week is to build some kind of card display for my table, probably out of foam core (they make a nice black with black core that won't even need covering if I cut it well). I used to borrow the spinner rack from the Dawson Printshop, but I find that most people only look at what's in front of them, and don't actually turn the rack.

So that's what I've been doing. Phew! If I make it through this week, and next weekend, then I just have the Letterpress Gang Holiday Printers' Bazaar to prep for, but I'll mostly be using the same inventory I already have. I may try to print one more quick card in the intervening week, but I also have an xmas present for a friend that I want to get done so I can deliver it before I take off for the west coast on the 21st, leaving boy and cat to fend for themselves (well, technically boy will also fend for cat, but you know what I mean).

Letterpress at the Homestead

While I generally have done most of my printing at the Dawson Printshop in Halifax, I've also been slowly working towards setting myself up to print here at home. My studio space isn't huge, and I have to do downstairs to get water (the tap in the photo below is currently non-functional), and since it's on the second floor, I can't have anything too heavy. Eventually I hope to build an outbuilding of some sort with a concrete floor and then acquire a bigger press.

What I do have in here is a small proof press--the bed is cast aluminum, I think--that I was given by a friend. My first experiment of the day was to attempt to print a random assortment of mostly wood type (given to me by B's dad in Pennsylvania). It was a not-entirely-successful attempt, and though I ended up with some usable sheets of printed paper, they weren't quite what I was aiming for, and I can tell I'm going to be doing considerable trial and error with makeready to make this press work as well as I'd like.

The problems I was having are, I think, a combination of issues with the press itself (primarily the cylinder and the fact that I can only lock up type on one direction, which is not the direction of travel of the cylinder, so the pressure of printing works the type loose) and issues with the type (being old type, it's all different heights, and being a random assortment, it's extremely difficult to get it to lock up tightly). Still, it was a worthwhile experiment, and I am not giving up.

I also have a little 5x8" platen Kelsey parlour press. I've had it for a while and puttered about at getting it running (all it really needed was rust removal and lubrication). I finally got serious a month or two ago, and today got the packing in and some gauge pins on. I still need to adjust the platen some more, but I printed up a whole pile of little holiday candle images which will be cut and folded into gift tags. I might ink up in red tomorrow and do some more. I also have a Santa and some holly I'm going to combine with "to" and "from" in type and try printing those.