Editioning the Great Owl

Several years ago I made an an engraving of a great owl. This was (and still is) the largest Resingrave engraving I've made, coming in at 8 x 10 inches. The print was originally created as a show piece for a solo exhibition 5 years ago. At the time, I had limited access to a printing press and this block became a nightmare to print. The combination of super fine lines next to large solid black areas was very challenging to print correctly. I ended up pulling 3 or 4 Artist Proofs for the show and then I shelved the block.

About a month ago, the Chicago Print Collaborative invited me to be a part of their holiday print show and requested this owl. I decided it was about time to make a proper small edition.

The block is placed in the plywood jig I have set up on the etching press. This jig is a frame of wood allows the main roller of the press to roll along the side rails and gently press the paper onto the block. This prevents the roller from hitting the block and jumping off of it during printing. It also helps with aligning the paper.

Here are the prints drying. This took over a week because I used oil-based ink on this fibrous Kitakata paper, which soaked up the ink beautifully but stayed tacky for a while.

The Great Owl - 8x10 inch image printed on a warm Kitakata paper in an edition of only 10 prints. These are available in our shop!

All Aboard!

We had a blast designing a wedding invitation and thank you note for a couple that have been great friends of ours for years. They are both ferry captains on a very small and charming ferry in Martha's Vineyard. They decided to have their ceremony on the docked ferry and were interested in incorporating the ferry into the overall design on the invitations.

We went with an overall nautical theme, printing in a hand mixed dark ocean blue on Cranes 110lb paper. The invitation was designed as a trifold. The long rectangle invite featured a hand engraved ferry image on the top, along with the wedding information and nautical flags below.

The bottom section of the invitation doubled as the RSVP card. It was perforated, so the guests could simply tear the bottom square off and pop it in the mail as a postcard and eliminate the need for another envelope. The backs of this RSVP section were printed with the return address and, keeping with the theme, a nautical square knot design.

**The engraved block with the ferry design on it.**

**The layout design, ready to be made into a printing plate. Lettering was created and designed ion Adobe Illustrator.**

**A blind debossing test to check pressure and the plate.**

**Here is the plate on press ready to go! We used the Conrad etching press due to the plates long odd size and to get the desired deep impression.**

**A proof print to check the layout with the scoring and make sure everything looks good.**

**A look at the invite folded as it would slide out of its envelope.**

**The nautical flags spell out CELEBRATE. Their outlines were printed from the plate along with the lettering. Then the flags were hand tinted and colored in.**

In addition, the Thank You notes were on matching Lettra paper with Kraft brown envelopes and featured the ferry engraving printed again. I very fun project for a super fun couple!!!

Congrats Becca & Jeff!!

All Aboard!

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