Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Not really idle

Florida Green Anole--proof state on Japanese paper

I knew after I had proofed the Maple seed/leaf prints that I was going to try and print a small edition; but since I expect a higher than usual throw-away rate...I didn't really want to use my $20-30./sheet papers.
My home-sized paper at Euro 7.50/sheet isn't too bad (I'm excluding my extra labor/size costs) but at my last attempt I sized just 4 full sheets and I've used 2 of those on my experiments so I need more paper if I'm going to go that route.

So, I went and sized an additional 4 sheets of hosokawa elfenbein and 5 sheets of plain white hosho and as they're now dry but need to rest/"age" a bit I have a bit of a forced pause.

So, I took out my lizard blocks; As I had registration issues that I wss fixing "by eye", I meticulously reproofed those slowly block by block and now with my newly acquired kento-plug/shifting skills slowly added small shims to the red block, the yellow block (twice as the first time I moved it the wrong way) and one of the green blocks.
A little bit of practice helps as I noticed that when I started to see a slight off-register bit I was quick to just fix it and not just ignore it as I had in the past (afraid I'd make it worse by messing with the existing kento.).
So I added spacers/proofed one/ trimmed it back a hair/printed another and in the end finished 11 good prints (5 on Magnani Incisioni, two on Fabriano Artistico and 4 on my end pieces of the above-mentioned Japanese paper.).
So, I'm ready to go and paper is cut.
I hope to print 100? copies or so--but not tomorrow.
I'm off for a few days of holiday-- but when I come back--next week,
It's lizard-printing time.