I am Holly, Lord of the Idiots.

Well.

I spent a couple of hours Monday night and Tuesday morning transferring a pencil drawing to a linoleum block — AND! — I began to ink it. And you know what? I forgot to flip the tracing paper before the transfer because *derp!!* a print matrix is always in reverse. I knew that. Dammit.

So, I then spent more time yesterday transferring the drawing — correct side up — to a fresh block. Took almost two hours. Only to lift up the tracing paper and the sheet of Saral graphite tracing paper underneath it to see... NOTHING! Dammit. I had the Saral paper facing the wrong side; not a single graphite mark transferred to the linoleum.

See title of the blog entry: I had nothing on George Costanza in that moment yesterday. So, I counted to ten, walked around a bit. Pet the dogs. Did some laundry. Got some tea. Sat down and traced it... again.

On the plus side: since I've now redrawn it twice, I now have two further refinements to the original sketch with thicker, more dynamic lines and a simplified approach that's really superior to what I started with. On the downside, my brain hurts. That is all.

The block in front is the correct and final transfer. The partially-inked block way above it is facing the wrong way. Note all the extra sketches... Anyway, this will be a 4-block, at least five color linoleum block print. The keyblock I'm doing now will be the hardest to carve, with the lightest color also containing a lot of the highlighted waves in the same pale color as the sky. This will be my most ambitious project yet because I've set up a real challenge for myself in handling the color layers more like one of the California school, early 20th c. Japanese woodblock method artists. I'll be doing more transparent layers of ink extender with the oil based inks to get an over-printed, highlighted effect.

I hope... Needs to be done by Nov. 5th. Zoiks!