Printing Something Else

 After a few times printing copies of "Love in Vain", today I got to print something else.  It all goes to the same place- my Virginia order.  The last thing to print was a copy of "Cross Roads Blues", the latest finished print in my Robert Johnson series.  I do have one digital image of the image area of the print, but I have never done a proof that includes the lyrics, but that is what I am requested to make, so today was a first.  

When I was driving up the street I noticed a lot of cars in the back parking lot, but didn't think much of it at the time, as I could also see some cars in there front lot.  But as I came around the corner, I could see people up on the roof, scraping shingles off and sending them down to the ground, so parking near the building was out.  Luckily I could see some empty spaces around the perimeter, so not a real problem.  However, I also saw a lot of caution tape near the front.  As it turned out, I probably could have gotten around it and to the front door, but I decided not to take a chance with getting hit with debris, and entered the building through the office.  It turned out no one was there anyway, and it took me to the basement anyway, which is where I was heading.  I was by myself as usual, so I put on music.  In this case, my home burned copy of Bob Brozman's The Devil's Slide, made from the later extended disc, and not from the vinyl copy that first appeared at the radio station in the late 80's.  You can read about this on this blog back in February of 2020.

Before I did anything else, I checked paper.  I need to place an order soon, and I wanted to know what I had before buying anything else.  I have enough paper and ink to fill any orders I should have in the near future, but I will need more of everything soon, including for shipping work to Virginia.  That settled, I pulled out the block, tore a piece of Rives Lightweight to the right size for one of these recent prints, and then got all my ink stuff.   The block seemed to ink fine, but did require some re-inking to get a proper proof.  The letters had never been printed before, so this took a little extra work, but I got it all done as the first disc was ending, and I liked the results, which can be seen below:

As I cleaned up, I put on another disc from my jazz/blues book, Djangology Volume I by Django Reinhardt, probably with violinist Stephane Grappelli, though I don't have the original disc with me to confirm that.  My home burned disc says it was recorded in 1934-5, though again I can't confirm that. I put these discs together as the music is similar.  The big difference is that Brozman was active in the 80's and specialized in playing old music (that album includes two Johnson covers, so it fit with today's print), while Reinhardt was active from the 20's to the late 40's (dead by the 1950's), and the music sounds old because it was old.  So that played while I cleaned up my tools, palette, etc.  The new proof went into the drying rack for now.  

That makes 5 prints done, and one more to go.  Next time I work on something else.