Drying

Sometimes my printmaker is a disaster. A few months ago I was asked to contribute a design to a book of prints about open spaces in Lewes. After much procrastination I worked something up based on an area called The Pells (a Victorian pleasure garden fed by a natural spring). The design was a very ambitious (for me) eight colour single block using the reduction method. It's ambitious because I'd never attempted anything more than three colours before. The reduction method is sometimes called the 'suicide' method - make a mistake and there is no going back. The first three colours went down fine and then disaster, colour four dried much darker than expected and as a result the remaining colours couldn't be printed. Four weeks wasted. So I've started again, I've simplified the design - its now four colours - and re-imagined it as autumn rather than summer. The second colour is now drying. Hopefully I'll still make the deadline of 1st December.