Failure is an Option

It seems like, in general, most people (including myself) share our success stories on our blogs and in our social media realms.  This is fine and nice to let others share in our joy or to be an inspiration for somebody else.

But how often do we share our failures?  Why would we want to do that?  Failure in our society isn't seen as a positive thing.  But aren't we suppose to learn from our failures?  Then, how can we learn if we never fail?  What if someone else could learn something from our failures?

"I have not failed.  I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Edison 

You have probably heard this quote before.  Edison must have learned a lot from so many attempts which eventually led to something that did work.

I am going to share one of my recent art failures with you today.  As most of you probably know, I have been getting into printmaking for the past several years (thanks to the local printmaking studio, Wingtip Press).  Wingtip hosts a print exchange every year (this is the fifth year) and I have participated every year.

This year I wanted to attempt a reduction linocut.  I have just done a few of these in the past.  You can see the one I did last year here. This time I wanted to do a four color reduction.  Starting with the lightest color, I printed yellow.

As you can see, there wasn't much I needed to carve out of the block.

Printmakers also call the reduction linocut the "suicide" print.  This is because you continue to carve out sections on the same block for each color.  If you mess up, you cannot go back and print more.

I started with about 26 prints hoping to get 14 that would turn out o.k.  Here are all the yellows printed.  So far, so good.

Then I carved some more and printed the second color, orange.  Already I had missed the registration of some of the second color as you can see by the middle one on the bottom row.

More carving and the third color was green.  

On one of these, I actually printed the plate in the wrong direction.  I guess I wasn't paying attention. The registration is also off on many.  At this point, I pretty much knew I wasn't going to get enough good prints, but continued on.

Finally, the last color was black.

They don't look too bad from afar.  But take a closer look.

Above you can see that the registration of the colors is off from the edges and the stems in the middle.  The extra lines on some of the leaves are what printmakers call "chatter" from the block. Often I don't mind the chatter, but I don't like it for this piece.

Out of 26 prints, I got zero that were acceptable to me.  A complete failure!  I was so bummed because the Leftovers deadline was looming and I now had nothing for it.  (I did manage to do another print for the deadline and will share that in another post.)

What I learned from making this print:

1)  Reduction linocuts are hard!  I already knew that but they get even harder with more colors.

2)  I need to figure out a better way to do the registration.

3)  Thin lines don't work very well with this technique.

4)  This design probably should have been in a different process altogether.  I'm thinking maybe as silkscreen print (or hey, how about fabric!).

5)  I think I liked this design better with just the three colors (yellow, orange, green) but couldn't just stop at that point as the design wouldn't have been complete.

6)  Practice, practice, practice will probably never make it perfect, but it will make it a lot better!

7)  I need to figure out a way to repurpose failed prints into new art (collage?) so I don't waste the paper.

And here is an artist that really knows how to do it - Stuart Brocklehurst.  He shows the progression of steps of the pieces he is working on, on his blog.  He prints his by hand (without a press).

Merry

Christmas is almost here.  I have been enjoying parties and activities, but haven't gotten much artwork done.  I did manage to create a reduction linocut card for people who purchased my artwork this year and a few friends.

I have written about the reduction linocut process here before.  It's a little scary to do because you don't know how many good prints you will get in the end.  So, you always start with more than the number you want.

I still feel like a novice when it comes to print making.  There is so much to learn.  I learned a few things from doing this card:
-  First, don't fold the paper before you print.  It's harder to print that way (duh!).
-  It's helpful to have all the ink colors when mixing ink.
-  Don't use Sharpie on the linoleum block.  It will print with the ink. (I knew this but had forgotten.)

My original drawing for this card had a color scheme of pink, red and burgundy.  When I pulled out my ink colors, I only had Red Oxide which doesn't make for a very Christmas-y red.  It was o.k. to make the pink, but after that I had to change my plan.

Here is the first color, pink.  I was just using some card stock I had on hand.  I liked the creamy, yellowish color but didn't have enough of that and had to use some white, too.  You can see that the pink looks slightly different on each of the background colors.

The dark outlines around some of the shapes is the Sharpie.  It might be an interesting effect to use on purpose some time.  Fortunately, in the end, you can't really tell.

I printed these by hand, which means I rubbed on the back of the paper with a barren.  I set up an area for printing on my drafting table.

On the right is a piece of glass that I mix and roll the ink on.  The other piece of glass is what I put the block on when I'm inking it.  On the left is the inked block ready to print and that knobby thing above it is the homemade barren that my friend made and gave to me.  It works very nicely.

I had to create something so that I could register the paper each time I did a new color.  Here is what I came up with.

I used a leftover piece of mat board and taped some smaller pieces of mat board strips to it.  This is to place the block in the same position every time.  On the left I had marks to line up my paper.  Since I had folded the paper first, I had to be more careful getting the paper to the block side.

After all the pink was printed, I carved away some more of the block and printed a light blue.

Then I added one last color to give it a little more depth.  I had some help from some friends in deciding what the last color would be.

Here are a bunch of the finished ones drying.  The last color was a dark bluish gray with some silver mixed in.

I hope your holidays are Merry!