Priscilla Read – Art Journey

It was a busy week, and I didn’t have time to do any homework for my printmaking class.  I usually do my carving at home, so I can spend most of my in-class time using the press.  As I was getting ready to head over to the class at Chrysalis Studio in SF, I grabbed my supplies and was thinking of what I could do in class without too much effort.  One of my goals for this session in Luminous Linocuts was to create a two plate lino cut print.  I thought I would just have to draw “something” quickly in class and carve two plates. I suddenly remembered my sketchbook and thought that I must have a recent drawing that I could translate into a print.  So I flipped through the sketchbook and decided to tackle this shoe drawing that I did earlier this month.

Katie Gilmartin helped me analyze the drawing and determine what to put in each plate. I decided to put the upper part of the shoe and insole on one plate and the lower part of the shoe (including part of the insole) on another.  The insole part would overlap, helping with registration and creating an area where the two colors would overlap.  Katie showed me how to register the images so they would be perfectly aligned when I printed the two plates on one piece of paper.

I reversed the drawing using the light table, then carved like a mad woman.  I was able to carve the two 4″ x 6″ plates and make one print (and one ghost print) by the end of the three hour class.  Somehow, during carving, I got the “N” in Keen backwards!!! Our two colors that evening were orange and raspberry, so I used orange on the lower plate and raspberry on the other.  There were only five minutes remaining in classs, and everyone had some last minute printing to do.  Very exciting moment when my print came off the press, perfectly aligned!!! Here’s the resulting two color print.

Here it is in a second colorway – printed 21May2014 on white paper