Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Priestess Edition is almost there...

Started editioning the priestess. Got about 8 printed before I noticed the red cutmarks being picked up (see above card on the right) So out of 20 I've got about 12 to work with for an edition of 10. Not such good odds, may end up printing more in order to get a good edition. An edition is a set number of prints that are very very very consistent.

Here you can see why two of the same prints would not be considered an edition. There is a variation in the color between these two cards. For some reason the brayer (roller) didn't pick up and/or transfer as much blue ink to the printing block when I pulled the card on the above right. Variations like this occur because a human being is printing these images. If a machine were doing this, as in the pages of a magazine, then variations are an extreme rarity. When a human being does it clean consistent editions are not as easy.

Personally I like variations and usually consider minor variations to still be within an edition. But for a master's degree in printmaking my thesis project has to be full of good clean consistent editions. Simply because a master had better be able to know the difference and produce.

Because of the nature of the handmade paper these cards are being printed on there will be some variations that are unavoidable. these handmade papers with four deckled edges (jaggedy untrimmed edges) don't always have even or squared edges. Because of this some of the cards will have a slight border on the top and/or the left edge. (see the top of the right hand card on the very top of this blog)

1 comment:

Sharri said...

Looking great. I think this is my favorite - it reads very clearly and is a beautiful choice of colors - good job!