On selling things

I’m a bad salesman.  Quite possibly, I’m the only person who could come back from a sales trip with a negative balance.  Which is why I don’t do it.  I have no confidence in my product, even when I have faith in what I produce.  When I managed to produce artwork in the past, it was often something I’d squirrel away against some future hope that it could be part of a portfolio.  I once harbored the dream of getting a few illustration jobs here and there.  But, the professional attitude, the know-how, and the networking simply weren’t there.

Anyway, now I’m pushing ahead my own way, and to hell with the way things are done.

In Other News . . . I’m working on another block print.  It’s a project I started in April, and had to drop for a while when I moved this summer.  Now that I’m getting everything sorted out again, it’s time to pick up this project.  It’ll be a giant centipede, printed in separate segments, probably on a nice Japanese paper, or something that appeals to me.

And, returning to my love of pen and ink, I’ve got a series of drawings cooking that should be wicked enough to live up to my moniker.

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That print’s now for sale

The print that I posted about last time is now for sale at my Etsy shop: http://oldscratch.etsy.com:

The first print in a series of 11

I’ll be posting the prints one at a time since the results were different.  Eventually, I’ll print a new edition that will be monochromatic–maybe something other than black.

An Ambitious Project, Take 2

Either an unexplained error on my part or a bug with WordPress has led to my previous post of a few weeks ago not displaying the series of images I added to the post.  Which led to a bit of weirdness where the captions for all those images became sort of a paragraph in themselves. Let’s try this again.

Here’s the original photo:

The tree that provided the original inspiration.

The drawing that I did, based extremely loosely on the tree in the photo.

Step 1. I did a drawing of the tree I saw, roughly the size of the block.  I tend to work quick and sloppy, because it helps me beat procrastination.  So I traced the original block, and kept my drawing within that framework.  I used a sharpie to try and cut down on my tendency to overdo the details.  Didn’t work.

Starting the cut: the outline of the tree.

Step 2.  After adding the design to the block with transfer paper, I cut away all the negative space around the outline.  Then I started on the inside, where all the details were.  I knew I wouldn’t get them all.

Step 3.  Inking up the design with black mixed with a bit of blue.  I had thought at the last minute that I wanted this to be two colors after all: silver and black.  Unfortunately, since I already started cutting the top, the only place the silver stands out on the tree is at the lower half of the trunk.  I still liked the effect.

The block fully inked.

The first color all printed: the silver layer.

Final Result: I applied the black ink over the now dry silver ink with a paper registering system, basically just an outline of the paper size with an outline of the block on the inside.  Again, registering a print can be intimidating, and I don’t pretend to be a professional at this.  I just let it be what it wants to be.  Hence, some prints turned out better than others.

And here's the result.

I printed a small run of these that I’ll soon make available at my Old Scratch store on etsy.