Cross Road Blues

 I decided to let the ink on the Blood Draw block dry a little longer, and work on my other project today.  That is my latest Robert Johnson block, based on his song Cross Road Blues.  This is probably Johnson's best known song, or at least the one best known to the general public.  That is partly from the famous Cream cover of the song, and partly because of the well known story of Johnson going down to a local crossroads to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for being taught to play guitar.  Here in 2024, we don't really know if Johnson ever went to a crossroads, and what he may have done there, or how he suddenly learned how to play guitar, and at this point, almost 100 years later, we are not going to learn more than we knew before.  I had avoided this song in my first batch of prints because is is so well known, assuming someone else would have tried to do a print based on the famous story and song, while I knew many other of his songs.  But then I had an idea that was not about the famous exchange, but more about Johnson's life and death.  And it did not require the use of a model.   

One thing I needed to do was fix the borders.  I had put them in based on things measured on other completed blocks, but before I did any more work, I thought it best to get this done right.  So from my car I had brought in a yardstick, one of a bunch I keep in my car.  It turned out my homemade borders were not quite right, and since this piece is supposed to go to another location, I figured I should get it right.  So I redrew that.  This changed the proper location for the text, so I put in new lines and roughed in new letters to match.

It is my understanding that text will be added to all the prints, as specified by the artists, at a letterpress specialty shop, so the photos I send to the gallery will not have this.   However, I am planning these images to be also shown in other places (such as my current show upstairs from my Studio), so I am cutting text with each one, though the only one I've printed that way to this point is "Love in Vain" as one of the prints I am showing now.  

The other thing I was working on today was the image area.  I drew a couple of main elements in the past and liked them.   In one, my hand holds a whisky bottle (from the collection my grandfather left behind when he mover out of this house), with a rolled up sleeve, as I imagine a guitar would be played in an un-air conditioned southern road house in those days.  In another, I adapted a figure drawing that I assumed would fit the space well, based on a figure drawing I had done a decade or so ago.  Based on the positions of arms and legs, nothing was shown that can't be in a public space, and the first element covers her up more.  Part of my assignment for today was to fix both of those.  This took the form of changes to the label on the bottle of whiskey, and some simplification of the figure to make her a little more stylized and abstract, while still leaving it obviously a woman.  I like the new versions of both better so far.  However, this still leaves me with some blank space in the image area, so I have to think about what I will do with that.  And I won't be showing the block until I come up with some resolution of that.

My plan had been to bring a disc from home, from my pile of loose discs in individual cases, but I left it on the table at home, so that was not an option.  I ended up putting on one of Molly's discs (one I have, too), so I'll try to bring something better next time.  At least I remembered my photo ID tag this time, so I could get in the front door.