150 hours in

The weather has been good and hot here in Italy! Which means even more reason to keep on trucking along with this current project and stay cool in the shade of the indoors.  I'm about 150 hours into the plate and this is what it's looking like.  In about 25 more hours of work I should be ready to pull a first proof and see where to go from there. Luck for me this is the bulk of the work in this first stage and then everything starts to move faster and easier from that point on. Subtle blends of tone and strong highlights will really start to take shape at that point.

Summer Studio Sessions

Just because school stops doesn't mean the studio closes!  I've been doing my best to keep working hard even though I've been doing lots of R&R and travelling around Italy. Since the school studio has closed for the summer I'm somewhat limited to the kinds of work I can be doing at home,... nothing toxic, and pretty much no printing.  I have however been going steady on prepping copper plates for future mezzotints. Its been a lot of hard work that has not only been physically tiring and time consuming, but has also started to take a bit of a toll on my right arm.  I've ordered a Rollerblade wrist-gaurd to combat the strain on my wrist as well as a tennis elbow brace to help stabilize my elbow as I rock.  All of this is more preventative than anything and will hopefully allow me to make these kind of prints for a long time to come.

I'm lucky right now that even though the school studio is closed, a good friend of mine has access to another print studio for the summer and has been kind enough to give me free access to proof and do small amounts of work after hours.

Most notably I managed to complete the rocking on my large 30cmx30cm plate for the Hortise as well as the initial tracing. These steps are always the most dull steps the process so now its all just fun and games as I work to make the copper come alive with an image.

On the side I've been making a few small plates for fun... nothing worth of writing about, but surely they will get filled with imagery soon!