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B. Zedan

This year's holiday card!

Posted by bzedan on Jan 12, 2023
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[Main image description: A hand holding lino print smaller than an index card, of the black silhouette of palm trees in front of a sloping mountain range, with three crows flying across the sky. The black is printed on top of a bright and roller-textured gradient of yellow at the top shading down into a dusky red.]

Now that holiday mail has started arriving at its various destinations I can share the process! This year's card was a small linocut, done in an edition of fifty. 

I did a simple silhouette of the view from where we live, which I'm not a little obsessed with. I did! Forget about mirroring but who cares. There are three crows flying in the sky because "three beings" tie it loosely to Día de Los Reyes for me, and crows are kind of the household trademark. I printed the drawing out to the scale of my little easy-cut lino block and went to work. It's been YEARS since I've done a lino print but the old memory of the procedure was still there.

 

A workspace with three artfully scattered items; at the top is a laser-printed drawing of the black silhouette of palm trees in front of a sloping mountain range, with three crows flying across the sky. Below is a less clean lino block print of the same, missing some of the detailing in the palm fronds in the original image. In the upper left corner, partly cut off, is the white-eraser looking lino block itself. The cuts in it are clearly made with far too narrow a blade.

 

I did this whole thing with the smallest blade, which was annoying (though useful once I went in for the details) because I could have sworn there were a load of other blades in the handle. When I was putting everything away after I learned I was correct - the other cutting tool had all the other blades in its handle. Well, now I know.

 

With the easy part done, it was time to prep for printing. The prints are done on two different papers because that's what I had on hand and I won't buy things if I don't need them. We did need a new brayer though, as the one I had was too narrow for what was coming next.

 

Chase ran sunset/sunrise gradients because he has the ability to not overthink a technique that I can't match. I would have worried about evenness (and you can tell the handful I did because the gradient is too blended and less dramatic). Rather than doing it on itty bitty bits, he rolled the gradients on larger pre-cut sections that I could slice up once they were dry.  

 

A wooden table with three work areas set up on it. From bottom to top they are: an acrylic plate on a piece of black construction paper, with a goopy gradient blend of yellow red and purple on it; a large piece of black construction paper with a narrow sheet of paper on it that is being rollered in sections with the gradient from the plate, the black paper catching roll-over; a piece of black construction paper with a finished print. In the left of the image stands a person who is doing the rollering, their arm blurry with movement

 

With those done, it was time to do the boringest bit (for me) of printing: the lino block itself. I set up a little register mat with a white coloured pencil and some black paper (I have a lot of large black construction paper that is like ten years old so it gets used for this sort of thing a lot) and got to work. 

 

A wooden table with three work areas set up on it. From left to right they are: a piece of black construction paper holding nine finished prints of black silhouette on a gradient; a piece of black construction paper with white register marks slashed across it, a piece of paper face down on a block in the middle; an acrylic plate with black ink on it and a tiny foam roller. The are of the table not set up for printing has assorted pantry items on it.

 

I had to do it in blocks of fifteen prints or so at a time because I just cannot focus that long with precision. I printed well over fifty in the end, so we could grade things after. It was fun to decide as I printed if the gradient would be a sunset or a sunrise. I remain Not That Great at clean printing, but lordy I'm not being graded on these, I'm sending them to those I love and care for, so who cares?!

 

It was very pleasing to write on all the cards when everything was dry and set. Who gets which mountain view? What flavour of sunrise/sunset?! I absolutely didn't get photos of any but the two we kept for ourselves (not counting the ones that didn't make the cut for various reasons). But they give you an idea of the range of moods we got in printing these.

 

A hand holding lino print smaller than an index card, of the black silhouette of palm trees in front of a sloping mountain range, with three crows flying across the sky. The black is printed on top of a smeared and roller-textured gradient of purple at the top patchily shading into red with highlights of yellow. There are paper-blank patches in the gradient indicating this was a pretty misprint.

 

So that is the card for 2022 (I just realised I number them by the previous year, although they're sent out for a January holiday, lol - link to the tag of public posts on Patreon if you want to download previous years). I know I normally share a download of the card, but as the entire vibe this year was one of the personalised variables, I am not this time! But don't worry I do have something utterly ridiculous to share in the next process post that you CAN print off at home.

 

Thank you as always for your support! And I'll add what I put in a lot of cards: here is to a new year and the possible joys within.

 

Crossposted to Patreon

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