Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Yay Beer! Coasters!

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Just finished up our first sets of coasters: Sacred Beer and Chartreuse Woodgrain. The top image is Mona's original illustration of a sacred beer tattoo that I carved for a three-color print. So that's three separate stamps, which then had to be registered by eye for printing. Of course she had to hand draw an old-timey seriffed font [edit: I thought it was a real font, but Mona just scolded me and told me she drew the text by hand, so I'm editing], which is not exactly easy to carve, but it came out better than I expected. I tweaked the design to allow for things to not have to line up perfectly, and I love how they came out. You can see more pics in my Flickr set. (If you look closely, you can see the etched leaves glass)

We're trying to think of more "useful" items for the shop, rather than just "luxury" collectibles. So into the housewares venue we go. I'm working on some wall paintings of illustrations of mine. I'll post them when I get them finished. I'm painting in oils for the first time, I've never really had the space or ventilation before in our shoebox of a NYC apartment, but now that I do: mmm, colors.

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Also in the pipe are some ACEOs of a holiday Totoro from Mona's illustration. I think it's pretty freaking sweet and can't wait to finish it. I wanted to make some prints larger than the typical rubber stamp can handle, and since we aren't in our own house yet and don't have the space for silkscreening, I though linocut prints would be the next logical step. Ouch. Whole different animal. I did a small test on a 2x2 lino block of soot sprites, and so far the results aren't quite what I expected. I think I need to measure my ink distribution and adjust the depth of my detail cuts. I'll keep at it though and post more when I've gotten a bit further along.

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