Active rest.

I don’t really ever stop, but after finishing that plate a few weeks ago i knew i needed to hold myself back from jumping into something else. Last thing i needed was a rebound project without any time to come up for air. I have a very busy mural schedule shaping up from the end of this month so i’ve been attempting to keep up with juggling all of that alongside the miniatures project release and ultimately editioning the durer plate later in the summer.

I decided to use my post engraving enthusiasm to shape up my printing space. Testing some new press blankets, papers and inks and generally just seeing if there’s any micro improvements i can make before i think about editioning the durer plate.

One big worry for me was that about a week after finishing the plate i realised i felt nauseous and stressed if i even looked at my engraving table and the old reference images i was so used to studying every day for the past three years. I had an increasing feeling of unease that i’d somehow psychologically damaged myself with three years of strict discipline.

So i figured the best thing to do was just do a miniature engraving to see how it all felt. I chose to do a tiny skull on a stamp size scrap of copper. The smallest plate i’ve done so far in my miniatures project. Luckily the grim feeling of engraving gave way to a realisation that i could do confident line work and not feel like a wrong move would ruin years of work. I found myself working faster than ever. After a few days i’d managed to go from prepping the copper to fully editioning the print ready to be included in the rolling miniatures series.

The tiny finished print at 3cm by 3cm.

The copper plate inked and ready to print. (not easy to wipe a 3cm plate)

Some of the printed edition after drying and cutting. (normally i wipe the plate sides more but at this size it often resulted in pulling ink out the image.)

Sorting the details of the miniatures release has been priority since completing the durer plate because i know once i start taking on mural work i’ll just get sucked in. One great surprise while i was going through studio draws cutting prints was the small woodblock i talked about in a past post. I found 100 prints from the block left uncut in the bottom of a draw. It shows just how busy my miniature engraving draws are when there’s an entire print edition i’d done and totally forgotten about. So now there’s officially two wood engravings included in the first drop of random packs.

I have three of my phlegm logo stamps, each in a different colour. Each colour marks the print volume. Rather than hand numbering editions i’ve decided to use the stamps and a signature on the reverse to show the relative rarity of each image. Images that have been retired early due to wear or damage get a green stamp and tend to be under one hundred. Images that have a moderate run of one hundred to two hundred get a blue stamp. The majority of the good prints come with a red stamp and these run until i retire them. It seems to work well. I’ve always used my spare bits of time to print from old plates. Even when i just have a few hours in the evening i’ll soak a stack of paper and listen to a podcast while i print some miniatures. Over time i’ve built up a huge stock that’s ever expanding. I don’t use the stamps until i get a clear idea of how the plate performs. With the rare ones its usually an accident or sometimes poor technique that caps it. With the mid size runs stamped in blue it tends to be more about how i feel about the image. I just get bored fast if i don’t think the image is great. I’ve also noticed that occasionally poor engraving technique in places can make printing harder and after i’ve struggled to squeeze a few hundred it’s easier to retire it.

I’ll send an email out nearer the end of the month. I should hopefully have a release date for this first batch. I’m aiming at doing about 200 sets. Each set has five random prints. The only thing that i am ensuring is that every set has one of each format. So each will certainly include one of the full composition postcard size prints along with four mixed size miniatures. My plan is to do several of these drops through the year as its something i’ll always be working on in my spare time. I wish i could do a huge drop of these but it’s become clear that cutting, stamping and collating the sets is actually very time consuming. All i can say is be patient with it. I think in the long run not hemming myself in with edition numbers but still keeping it personal with the stamps will make it easier over time to get a neat collection of these. I also log in my printing notebook each time i print so even though it won’t be exact to the number i will end up with a rough estimate of each run for any collectors nerdy about numbers.

Looking further into the future regarding the miniatures i think after several releases of the random sets and there’s a good amount floating in peoples collections i’ll introduce non random sets. My first priority though is to try to satiate the people who’ve been chomping at the bit for years. Hopefully the stamp method introduces a sort of willy wonka’s golden ticket effect. Not knowing how rare images are until you open them. I’ll try and also cook up a few ways of selling these in person as time goes on.

X phlegm X