[Baren]: The mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking. Baren Digest Saturday, 12 September 1998 Volume 04 : Number 275 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Julio.Rodriguez@walgreens.com Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 17:29:50 -0500 Subject: [Baren 1624] re: business 101 The Baren Business School (BBS for short!) for starving artists (oops!) I meant aspiring artists. We can advertise for people to join the BBS at the WWW. Do you realize that art is the only business where you can possibly make more money dead than while alive ? Ok, enough kidding around. I like the idea Gary. We can all learn more about making money. Sign me up. For people like me who do art/crafts on the side & part-time, there are many pitfalls outhere. When I first did some shows back in the early 90's I always had a problem of not knowing what to charge for my wood artwork. Part of me wanted to be rewarded for the hard work and creativity spent; and part of me wanted to be successful, approved & sold out. High praise and "wow, how did you do that?" did not always equated to a sale. I also would give many freebies away to friends and relatives. My work in wood has always been kind of middle of the road between art and craft....so the question was always...do I call it ART and charge mucho $$$$ ; or; do I call it CRAFT and charge the going rate (3 x hourly-wage x hours-worked). I never had that problem with my photographs....they never sold at all ! Let's hear more about this....... ps. Did you know that..... A FOOL AND HIS MONEY ARE SOON PARTYING....... ------------------------------ From: Ray Esposito Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 19:24:47 -0400 Subject: [Baren 1625] pressing press update In my reply to Sheryl concerning the $99 small press, I was working under the idea this was the etching press. I just got my copy of Jerry's Catalog and what I should have been talking about is Speedball's Roma Studio Blockprinting Press. In my opinion, iti s a piece of junk. What you do is place an inked lino or wood block in the press, maximum 8x10, add paper, and pull down the lever with all your might. Unlike hand presses where you screw down the top plate of the press and the press does most of the work, the Roma requires you to do all of the work. I am a rather large person and even with all my weight and strength, the results were less than satisfactory. IMHO, spending $99 for this would be a waste of money. However, if someone REALLY, really, really wants one, they can have mine for a $75 donation to The Brass Ring Society. I would love the money but would feel bad putting it in my pocket. A charitable donation is acceptable and it is yours. Cheers Ray Esposito ------------------------------ From: Bill Ritchie Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 19:16:05 -0700 Subject: [Baren 1626] Re: Getting the Business Hi Gary and everyone - I was thinking about setting up some .txt files people in BAREN could download - selected chapters from my book, Art of Selling Art: Between Production and Livelihood. Last night I met with John Cass, a sales consultant, about the possibility of setting up a forum so I could re-write the book and do "Beyond the Art of Selling Art". I could use help, and John might be just the business orientation I need, balanced with a new balance of marketing. My book came out before the Web really got going. I'll wait and see what David Bull says--and of course anyone who wants to can look at the table of contents at http://www.emeralda.com/pp_asatc.html Bill ------------------------------ From: David Bull Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1998 14:18:10 +0900 Subject: [Baren 1627] One-point Lesson Before I get to this week's One-point lesson, I should go back a bit ... in [Baren 1388] Gayle wrote: > regarding Dave's last one point lesson: > (#18) Making sharpening stones for curved chisels ... >Is there any way you could include photos of this process? Reading >it was confusing for me. Maybe you thought _I_ had ignored this request Gayle, but John Amoss hadn't. He got out his drawing tools and put together a few illustrations to bring my clumsy description to life. May I recommend that everybody go to the 'One-point' section: http://www.woodblock.com/encyclopedia/topics/018/018_frame.html ... and check out lessons #16 and #18, where you will find John's very very attractive illustrations that make the process completely clear. Maybe from now on, the One-point lesson should be _visual_ - only adding words when absolutely necessary ... Thanks very much for these John; I am sure that everybody will appreciate them very much. *** Here is this week's 'One-point' lesson (contributed by David Bull) ********** ********** ********** (#22) 'Flipping' sheets during printing ... These lessons have talked about 'water' before, and will no doubt do so again and again as time goes by. Water control is at the heart of the traditional Japanese process. And today we come back to water once more ... Keeping the sheets at the appropriate level of moistness involves a bit of a contradiction - if any sheet was 'just right' at the moment of printing any particular colour, then as it picks up the impression of wet pigment and paste, doesn't it absorb that moisture and thus become too wet for the _next_ impression? This can indeed happen. If the area being printed is wide, and the particular type of impression being taken is one that uses quite a wet mix of pigment, the paper _does_ become too wet for the next impression, and sheets of newsprint cut to the same size as the print must be inserted between each sheet in the stack for a few minutes to pull out some of the excess water. But this is relatively rare. Is is usually the case that the water being added by the printing is generally balanced by water being lost during the process - by evaporation from the sheets being waved about in the air while coming onto the block and from the newsprint or cardboard covering the stacks of waiting and finished sheets. What is more common than an overall excess of water, is for the moisture to become unbalanced across the breadth of the sheets. Imagine a sheet being printed with a landscape scene - when doing the sky colour, every sheet gets moisture added to it only at the 'top' of the paper. If these sheets are stacked up in a normal way, all that 'new' water will be in one area and it will take many hours for the water to equalize across the stack. But if one stacks them 'heads and tails' with alternate sheets upside down, there will be no such problem, and the moisture will remain properly balanced. It's a bit troublesome to handle such a stack of paper when it comes time to print the next colour, as the upside-down sheets have to be flipped round for printing again, but there is no question that it saves the paper from becoming saturated in some places while remaining too dry in others. 'Heads and tails' - it works for sardines ... and woodblock prints! ********** ********** ********** Next week - ... printing with ceramics ... These 'One-point' lessons are being collected into a section in the [Baren] Encyclopedia of Woodblock Printmaking. http://www.woodblock.com/encyclopedia/updates.html Contributions from experienced printmakers for future 'One-pointers' are eagerly solicited. ------------------------------ End of Baren Digest V4 #275 ***************************