Boardwalk Season

As with my last time printing, today's Studio visit was linked to a request to purchase a print.  Last time it was a supermarket print, and I pulled what became the second proof so that I would have a good finished copy once I sold the first proof.  This next one is a more complicated situation, as the request is for a boardwalk print. The specific one requested was the Wheel Game print, and I already had two finished proofs- one framed in a show and one as part of a set I show to classes and such.  These have to be hand colored, and there are a lot of colors.  Few are straight from the tube, so they will have to be carefully mixed to match the previous proofs, much easier when you have one of those previous ones in front of you.  With that in mind, and today being a warm, free day, seemed like an opportunity to go to my cool basement studio and begin the process of proofing a boardwalk print.

The requested print in this case was the first in the series, the Wheel Game.  The first idea done in this series because it's one of my strongest boardwalk associations, and I felt it would work as a design.  It has been part of many shows since then and is an award winner, so at least some other people agree with me.  This series is printed on okawara, a very delicate Japanese tissue like paper, which I had stored at home, but everything else was up at the Studio already.

After a quick lunch in the building's lunch room, I got to work.  A lot of stray black marks on the block from previous prints, and at some point I should take my gouges and clean out some of those.  However, few of them took ink, so other than a little bit of taping, the inking went quickly.  Above you see the paper on the inked block- just light hand pressure brought the image through, and the darker image on the left side is where I had rubbed it with a printing tool.  Because it's almost transparent from the start, you don't waste time rubbing places where you don't need to, and it's easy to see what's inked and what needs more.  Below is the resulting proof.

While that proof looks fine at first glance, as the person who printed it, I knew there were problems.  The danger of such thin paper is that it can tear easily, and there were a few such problems.  I put a piece of bright yellow behind that section in the image below to make them stand out more.  My guess is that the paper had gotten slightly damp.  Down in the basement things were relatively comfortable, but even a hint of moistness on my skin could have caused this to happen.

Not going to worry about it today.  Once the ink has dried, I can carefully patch those sections with some okawara scraps.  Then touch up the ink.  Once colored, it will look fine.  This will take this proof out of the edition, but it would still work as a demonstration piece, which is what the one I am planning to sell was serving as.