Postcards and Winners

I had a need to make a bunch of something and there was a stack of postcards at hand, ready and willing to donate to the cause. There’s nothing like a growing pile of prints to make me feel productive. Using two small brayers (one-inch and three-quarters of an inch) I rolled out some backgrounds with leftover mixes of ink. 

A few hours later the ink was dry enough to overprint with a linocut of a coneflower I carved some years back. Again, I made use of some premixed ink – black with the addition of a few mystery colours.

Then I moved from postcards to notecards and practiced my mixing skills (titanium white with tiny dabs of phthalo blue and  phthalo green), aiming for a blue similar to these envelopes I had on hand. A dot of black would have likely greyed the ink down to a better match but I liked the slightly brighter colour and stopped there.

I printed a batch of backgrounds using the blue ink and that led to working on rolling up an even blended roll. This is where you lay out two or more colours of ink in a line that’s the length of your brayer. Then you load the brayer aiming for just the right mingling of the separate colours.

Mounting the coneflower linocut on stiff plastic (an old report cover) keeps the wiggly stem aligned and makes it easy to see where to position the image. The block is small enough to print with hand pressure but a portable Speedball printing press is easier on the hands and guarantees an even and consistent print.

The postcard idea and the coneflower block weren't anything new but the familiar format and image let me focus on other things. I played around with placement of the rolled-on ink.

Vertical or horizontal background? Small or bigger?

A single colour or two? 

A border or bleed off the page?

Add my signature dot? Or not? (I went with the dot -- I like how it stops the eye and brings it back to the central image.)

After a few days I'd amassed a pile of postcards and notecards, had a good go at practicing skills like the blended roll and improving composition, and ended the week on a pleasant note of satisfaction and productivity.

Plus I got to draw names for the give-away announced in the previous post! 

These blank concertinas are winging their way to Eileen, Suzan and Nancy. Enjoy!