St Genevieve part 5

Ready to print my new block today.  Digging stuff out of my parents' basement for a garage sale, I uncovered a small supply of Rives Lightweight- pieces that must have been cut down from full sheets for some unremembered purpose.  The pieces were the perfect size for saint prints, and it's the paper I have used for this series going back to 1994, so this was a fortunate find.

One thing that I had been thinking about since doing the original drawing was how much of the stone patterns should be included among the letters.  Usually with the saints there isn't any cutting right around the name, but once in a while the name goes over a more detailed part of the composition.  In that case I have to find the balance between image detail and clarity of the text.  With that in mind, I cut the area to include a few clues to where stone edges occur (a guide for when I color it as well), though none actually touching the letters themselves.  However, there's no way to know exactly how it will read until it's printed, so I decided to make two proofs- one as it's cut, and one with some of those in between bits not printing.  I did the latter first (adding bits of masking tape to the dry block, peeled off after the inking), then re-inked the whole block for the former.  Above is shown a detail of the first proof, the second one is shown below.  Looking at them side by side, I saw very little difference.  For those keeping track, the main differences can be found under the second E, between that E and the V, between the V and the I, and in the open end of that V.  I think both are readable, and am leaning toward keeping the masked bits in, but I'll show both to the critique group next week and see if they have an opinion either way.  I'll probably hold off on coloring until after that.

Below is the full proof of the second version, which besides including the little bits, is also a slightly better printing.

So far I like what I see.  I think it's already fairly readable, and color should improve that.  Molly (also working in the Studio today) gave her approval, mentioning that the background trees gave it a kind of 'alpine' feel.  In the drawing stage I had considered trees with more individual trunks and branches, but decided that might be a distraction from the well and that the simple evergreen shapes (which have occasionally popped up my prints in the past) would work fine as background.  I guess that was a good decision.