Studio Business

 A very sunny and nice day today, the kind of day to go up to the Studio.  Had nothing that needed to be done, but I can always find something to work on.

Having finished the latest Robert Johnson block, and deciding to hold off on proofing my Blood Draw block until next week, the next logical thing to work on in the next Robert Johnson block in that series.  I have an idea in mind, but I'm going to hold off on showing it or writing about it until I have something to show.  But I can still start working on it in a way.  For example, I did some sketches last night off the internet, things that may appear in it.  And today I prepared a block.

I decided today was a safe day to bring my saw in from the back of my car, with plans to maybe cut a few more blocks off the large piece of birch I keep on my Studio table when I'm not using it.  I have a piece the right size and grain orientation for what I plan for the next print in the series, but one side has some knots on it, very tough to cut.  And the other side has a stuck on price tag and some colorful ink (must be Molly being sloppy), and I was unable to get that price tag off when I tried the last time I was there.  However, it would be easier to use the one I already have sawn, than to saw off another one.  

I tried peeling off that adhesive tag again, but ran into the same problem- hard to get any of it up, and when I did it tore off rather than pull off the rest of the label.   Not going to happen.  But then I thought, could I sand it off?  I did have a piece of fine grain sand paper there in my Studio, and decided to give it a try.  First try was promising, so I did some more.  And some more.  And some more, etc.  Eventually, the price tag was gone, the wood surface was as smooth, and I didn't have to use my saw.  Took off the colorful ink the same way.

I always have some yardsticks in the back of my car, which may be a teaching thing, or a hardware thing (had family in the business), so also brought one inside with me.  Carefully measured the image size (which is the thing that counts in this case) from other blocks from the series, and reproduced it on my new block.  I've done blocks with two and three lines of text in this series, and without the lyric with me I wasn't sure what this would be, so for now I didn't put any lines or letters down yet.  Results can be seen below:

While I was there, I decided to check my photo source book one more time, to see if I could find any figures to help me with my planned drawing.  Did find one that may be helpful, and others had been previously marked on an earlier visit.  So I am ready for the next step, whenever that happens.