One amazing thing about quarters (instead of semesters) is that they go by astonishingly fast. Each quarter is ten weeks, plus finals week, and there’s no better way to measure this than by having a class that is only once a week and keeping track of which class session it is. I had no idea we were already on week four.

Anyway, the printmaking is going well. It’s interesting to note that carving and printing wood blocks requires a different method of visualization than plain drawing — since your print will come out in reverse (and inverse) from your block, you have to do more planning to ensure that you get the image you want. Two out of my three original blocks (my first block and the one assigned to be a pattern) were indeed Japanese-themed, mostly traditionally styled but with a bit of a modern stylistic twist. By my third block, I was very tired and couldn’t think of a good texture to do for my third one, so I carved out sections going with the wood grain, which actually looked not too terrible. Our next assignment was a self-portrait, which seems to be a requirement with Paul, and which actually wasn’t too bad with the woodcuts because I didn’t have to pay as much attention to detail as I did with pencils. I did a sort of stamp-art style, which turned out pretty cool. One interesting thing was that I left a lot of wood space uncarved, so when I inked it and printed it, you could see the grain of the wood printed on the paper.

Speaking of inking, it’s a very exacting (and kind of messy) process. You have to take just a little bit of whatever ink you’re using, scraping along the top of the ink in its container with an ink knife (no gouging — that makes the ink dry unevenly). Then mix the ink on a corner of a glass slab, working it around with the ink knife to get it warmed up. If you’re mixing colors, use a different ink knife for each tin of ink, and remember which knife you used to mix it on the slab. Then, when the ink is warmed up, gather it on your knife and draw a line across the top of the slab. This is called a fount. Then take a roller and roll the ink down the slab to make a big square, making sure to cover the roller evenly. After it’s all a uniform consistency, then you can roll it on your block. To print (always test first!), take your paper, with a piece of newsprint behind it, and place your block in the center of the paper (our very sophisticated method of measuring this is called eyeballing). Then flip it over and take it to the printing press, where you place it on the center of the board, place a plastic sheet called a tympan over it, and roll it through, naturally making sure to check that the press is at the right height for your board first. You get used to the routine pretty quick.

Cleaning up always takes a long time, though, and is at least as messy as the printing (it is almost guaranteed that ink will get all over everything, no matter how careful you are). We use corn oil to wipe off all the slabs and rollers, followed by a mixture called “Simple Green.” The ink is designed to stick to everything it touches (you don’t want your print to be too light), so removing it is an adventure. You go through a lot of rags.

2D Foundations turned out to be much more of a studio class than I thought, especially when they surprised me with the announcement that sections were in fact twice a week instead of once a week and in one fell swoop ruined my glorious dreams of having completely free Fridays for the first time ever (turns out most studio classes here only meet twice a week! So instead of a Monday/Wednesday/Friday class, I now have only a Monday/Wednesday class! This sort of happened fall quarter with drawing, which was Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday, but when I emailed Paul about it, explaining that I was in cross-country and that most of our meets were on Saturdays and would this be a problem, he told me that he didn’t meet his classes on Saturdays, which implied that was a personal decision and not a department thing). It is a good class, though, and we’re going over a lot of basic elements of 2D design, such as lines and composition. I may have mentioned before that my fine art skills are not the best, especially if I am unable to work from a photograph, so my work has been a bit behind the curve, but I suppose all I need is some practice. Overall, it’s a good review, and the work the professor shows us in lecture is proper art (i.e., not contemporary), but he makes sure to include a wide variety of artists and works to ensure the legitimacy of what he says, which is good.

The other main excitement around here has been that Portal 2 came out this week, and while I myself don’t have it, and haven’t played it, I have watched Tyler and Adrien play it, and I tell you that game pretty much single-handedly negates all arguments that video games can’t be works of art (I haven’t heard any of these myself, but Adrien assures me they’re out there). It’s beautiful not only in its visuals and concept, but in the elegant way it tells its story. Portal 1 (which I have played) was amazing, but Portal 2 just blows everything else out of the water. Any of you 3D people out there could probably learn from it, or at the very least be inspired.

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