Slow work

I seem to have been pottering around with this project for quite some time now...

On today's To Do List I had written PRINT!!! with the plan of heading to the studio,  picking up these lino cuts and printing some pages I had prepared earlier. 

Ha! Life has a funny way of dealing reality to you when you've simply been fantasising a bit.

I realised that I really needed to work out the sequence of the prints and the order of printing. The pages might be ready but I needed to know what was to be printed on the back of one page; the front of the other; which single images went where; which double spread images started the book  and finished the book...

Out came the tracing paper from my photos. Lining it up in the way I think the story would be told - looking at how the outline images and the solid images work together; how the double spreads might lead you through...

And then some of the 'plates' came out to give a more solid sense of the imagery as the pages unfolded.

Then I added in a few of the random proofs I had done previously to see if the print version helped me make decisions or discover the need to change anything.

At which point I realised I really needed to check which imagery matched the words and popped the draft words underneath what I think will be the double page spreads.

It was all getting messier and more confusing by the minute, so I decided to proof them all again on the same paper for easy comparison. A thing I probably should have done well before now; but I am always keen to use up scraps of paper rather than start in and proof on pristine paper. But without consistency in the paper it is hard to compare. Sigh.

And so I did.

And then I went around and worked out which plates needed more lino taken off and where, and began the task of cleaning up the plates to produce a better print.

And now I have a bunch of the plates tidied up and ready to print (maybe!). So perhaps on another day's To Do List I can say PRINT!!! and actually mean it...but probably not until the weekend.