December Printing Session
Here's a short clip of yours truly doing some photogravure printing for the project Valerie Schmidt and I are collaborating on - photogravures of professional StarCraft2 players.
I've pulled the first couple of prints on a mid-sized press (Halepress) from Finland, but wasn't too satisfied with the pressure it could deliver (with the pressure set the way I wanted it, the press really didn't sound too good), so I moved over to the large Sjöström press (ah, getting way too spoiled with all this 24h/365 access to a shop with many great presses - coming down in the autumn will be hard) - I think the upper cylinder alone weights as much as the entire Halepress, so pressure was not an issue.
1) You know how professional sports people watch themselves running to analyse and improve their performance? When seeing myself printing these photogravures I realized one thing right away: usually I prefer to have larger tarlatan pads - the ones I am using in the video were the last from my stash of tarlatan, and thus a bit smaller in size - it really makes wiping less efficient.
2) chewing gum, wtf. I think this is the first time I ever saw myself chewing gum, and while I don't mind other people chewing gum (as long as they keep their mouth closed), I strongly dislike seing myself do so. This is probably a bit too neurotic for a tumblr dedicated to printmaking, but meh - it's in the video, so I get to talk about it. My sis sent me a message after seeing the video, saying that chewing gum in high-speed looks awesome. (She was probably just having a pang of nostalgia for her pet rabbit Tiggr, who passed away some years ago)
3) Here's the video showing the plate making:
http://blackheartpress.tumblr.com/post/36029867051/progamer
4) Happy New Year, everyone!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HPQG6xlzU8