Lunar Calendar, Take 1

Yesterday I received confirmation that Heather, one of the owners of the Whiteaker Printmakers studio, will be available to help me print the edition of lunar calendars on Monday after the intaglio class. This is great news, and really lights a fire under me to nail the carving of this printing plate. I gave myself four days to get the kinks worked out, and I’m glad I did. It looks like I might need them all. Every plate requires about 7 hours of shellacking, drying and sanding before it’s ready to print. I can’t multitask them because the next plate needs to include the lessons learned from mistakes on the last one.

Yes, I’ve carved hundreds of wooden signs and dozens of printing plates with single-color images and, even, four-plate registered designs. The thing is, though, that I’ve never combined the two skill sets – large format carving and perfection-intensive designs. It turns out, not surprisingly, that preparing the birch for carving is extremely difficult. I’ll cover some of the difficulties in the next few posts, but for now let me walk you through today’s lesson…