So I have a problem with patience, namely that I don’t have much. Especially when it comes to my own work, I get extremely impatient with the progress I make, and tend to see individual leaves instead of the forest. It turns out that, when I step back and look at my progress like a normal human being, I’m actually moving along nicely (when I step back and take a look) on the invitation project of which I am in the midst. From last week’s designs (see below!), we’ve moved to these:

Once again, the revision process has proven its worth! These aren’t quite set yet, but it’s definitely refreshing to see the progression from the original designs to this point.

There’s something important to note about printing processes that I realized is not intuitively obvious if you’ve never used a printing press of any sort before: different presses and processes are capable of creating different sorts of print quality and imagery. With letterpress, because you are printing in relief (ie. from a raised surface), you are debossing the paper surface onto which you are printing, which means you can only impress one type of line and tone, no gradients of colors. This makes a lot of sense, when you think about the fact that the press is intended for the reproduction of type imagery, not complex visual tones.

On the flip side, with intaglio etching and many other conventional printmaking processes for reproducing images, as opposed to type, it is possible to create a range of tones, since you are etching into a surface at different depths and with different textures, thereby altering the ability of different areas of the plate to hold ink. For instance, this print by one of the eastern European printmakers my mom shows, A. Fedor (which also happens to grace our living room wall!):

The print quality is due to the different nature of these processes, and essentially comes down to whether you are creating a raised or engraved surface.

Until last year, I was much more of an intaglio girl, until I got a chance to jump in the deep end with letterpress, which is a wonderful way to combine the elements of typography, design and imagery with an elegant and impressive (!) print quality. I’d love to do more intaglio work…but that may just have to wait a little while right now!