le chat noir

On Friday I printed an edition of 18 of the little hypnotic cat. I decided to call him "Le Chat Noir" (The Black Cat). I think his shadow has a mind of its own. I'd like to write a short story/poem to put on the back of each print, but that will have to wait another week or two, after Finals Insanity has ended.

As you can see, I ended up rounding the corners, and I'm happy with how it turned out! I think some of the subtlety in the spitbite wore out (in the sky/horizon), or the blankets/pressure on the press weren't quite right. Regardless, I'm happy with it and it was nice to see that all 18 prints ended up being edition-worthy.



Proper scan coming soon, along with lots of exciting color proofs of my other kitty-print (still in need of a title--suggestions welcome).

Edit 5/4

Here's a scan of "Le Chat Noir"! Lucky 13 :)

I'm a cat, I'm a kitty cat...

CAAATS! Below is the first proof of my multi-plate color print.



This print is of the first plate, which will end up holding just about all the linework and will serve as the key plate. There are two other plates: one that will primarily consist of aquatint (and spitbite), and the other with the letters that will be at the top (see previous post with sketches). Obviously the idea has changed slightly, but the general layout is the same. Today I did some more etching to add the swirly lines in the background (which are also in my previously posted sketches). I did a more complete drawing of the current layout, but haven't had a chance to scan it.

I haven't used spitbite on any of my plates before, so I decided it might be a good idea to test it out first on a small plate. I doodled up the little guy below and added spitbite to the shadow after biting the linework. There is also a little bit of spitbite in the upper sky part of the image.



Isn't he cute? And hypnotic?