what a spectacle!

I drew another Odd Owl promo flier today. This one featured a spectacled owl wearing spectacles and smoking a pipe. A lot of detail in the feathers and branch. Took about two and a half hours.

I've been pretty consistently getting up at 11:57 or so. Before Noon.

Need to write up an invoice for Carmen. She agreed to cover my cost of materials and whatnot. Pretty awesome as we never discussed that possibility when I started (which needs to be something I need to get into the habit of asking for).

Friday is gone. Now I just have Saturday and Sunday. Wrote out my next week to dos. Mostly just reading stuff. Need to get on that.

Mom and Pop and Nate and Rubie are enjoying Hawaii right now.

post office blues

Got the posters sorted out. Picked 8 to go to Luckey's in Eugene and 16 for my own private collection. The first trip to the Post Office contained buying a box to put the large posters in, and mailing the tube. I got booted out of the line on the first pass because I didn't have the tube taped and since the box wasn't big enough, I had to find stuffing for it. On the second pass I got the tube mailed and box paid for. Then, in the pouring rain, I returned home to use the left over packing peanuts and wadded paper to secure the posters. The box got soggy on the trip, but the posters were fine. It took forever to find the packing tape. The ride back to the Post Office was clear.

On the first pass, it turned out I wrote the TO and FROM on the top in the wrong places and was booted to rewrite them on a piece of paper that the lady taped on. She was really nice about all my mistakes though. Now I know better. Some 250 posters are on their way to San Fransisco right now. Hurrah!

Spent the rest of the day doing nothing. Figures the sucky weather comes when I don't have to work. Now Thursday is gone. Friday..then Saturday...then Sunday. Then my Spring Break is over. Dang.

plenty of pretty posters

Karen joined me for printing, and it was super fun. I used the dredges of one emulsion bucket to coat my screen, which ended up being a huge mistake. The dust got lodged in the emulsion and washed out when I washed out the stencil. This means that I had spots and dots where I didn't want them. So I removed the emulsion. Karen coated another screen using the good emulsion, and that would have worked perfectly if she hadn't put the stencil on the exposure unit backwards. Silly Karen! Coated another screen, which ended up having the detail wash out after I exposed it. Don't know why it was having so much problems, but anyway, we just traded off printing on the one worked screen and it went really fast. And as we both could take breaks, neither of us got overly exhausted and weary. Chatted and had a good ol' time.

Total poster count: 275.

I have some of just the text, and some of just the figure. I'm going to pull some for keeps but the rest I will mail to Carmen tomorrow. I'll miss all my hard work.

Afterwards it was Chipotle time! I covered Karen and she is going to cover me on a meal next week when I help her print. We were able to enjoy about an hour of good day light.

Went back home. Watched Justified. Switched from Firefox (which kept freezing whenever I tried to upload a photo and video was really shaky) to Google Chrome. Now my browser feels as fast as the rest of my computer. Wheee!

It took a long time to sign and edition all my posters. I went through them first just counting 1...2...45...46...89...101..130..157..199..220...234..235...270...275....just to make sure I had the correct amount, and was happy to find I did. So much printing. But they came out really nice.

beat by the squeegee

Ahh so bloomin' exhausted.

I wanted to be out the door at 1, but left at 2. The school didn't close till probably 10pm, so no biggie. Had breakfast, washed my hair. Now that my hair is so long, I don't like washing it. Takes so much time and it dries poofy.

Anyway. I decided to put both images on the screen and try to print two posters in one swoop. It went well until I got to printing. The pulls were not coming up. So instead of struggling, I cleaned off my screens and started fresh with just one single Odd Owl layer on a screen. It took twice as long to print, but it was largely flawless printing. The colors went from turquoise to dark blue to light blue to gray green to rich green back to a gray green, and finally a nice pastel. A really nice color story through that layer. I used up five things of left over ink, ink that would probably be washed down the sink once it goes bad. Counting off the posters, there were 277 of them. I printed about 50 every 25 minutes or so. A lot of work to do by myself, but I had the radio and company. Karen was around, as was Tabitha. Karen said she would help me print tomorrow, and even if she does it for an hour, that will be an hour where I am printing twice as many. It looks good. I'm very happy with it. Sure it sucked having to redo the emulsion, but while that was drying I cut paper and ate lasagna.

My legs hurt so much right now. I took the streetcar home. I was just not up for the ride back. Katie made clam chowder. I took a small bowl of it and used it as dipping material for bread. Mmm. Watched Lost, great episode. I wish there was more Richard in the show in general, I really like his actor (Nestor Carbonell, he plays Batmanuel in the live action version of The Tick). Then I watched Pee Wee's Big Adventure. So fun. Hit the spot so well. I can't quite believe it came out in 1985.

More printing tomorrow. Whoo.

OH! Some dingbat totally left a scoop full of emulsion out. If Tabitha hadn't have caught it, it may have damaged what was a new scoop. People are so all over the place. Have to have some responsibility for messes! Argh.

crippling hand pain or "Go Love Yourself"

My bed is so cozy. Spring break feels good. And this time I don't have food poisoning!

Spent the day drawing insane detail in the lady. It takes a long time to do all the detail. A really. Long. Time. Fun though, just time consuming. I'm happy with the way it turned out though. Can't wait to print tomorrow! Going to eat breakfast, make a sandwich, and go print my heart out.

I could possibly fit two images on one screen, but that might cause more registration problems than it is worth. I also wouldn't have to cut the posters just yet. Something to think about. Hmmn.

Watched the first two episodes of the new HBO miniseries The Pacific, and Six Feet Under. HBO is pretty much awesome.

At 7pm, Deanne, Karen, and Robin may or may not have come over to wheat paste. I may or may not have made a huge batch of glue. We may or may not have piled into her VW Bug and set out into down town. We certainly didn't stop at an abandoned building. We didn't put posters up on walls we shouldn't have. Or place them near max stops. Or cover a newspaper dispenser. We certainly didn't giggle like little girls and hop around in joy at our doings. We certainly didn't learn about how to paste more efficiently. No not at all. And Robin certainly didn't keep an eye out for the po-po.

Roxy is closed on Monday, so we went to Santeria. Got a plate of nachos and chips. Super tasty end of game meal. Went back to the Goose. I washed our materials, we chilled for a bit, then parted ways. Great time was spent certainly not doing anything suspicious.

poster layers

Saturday:

A really do nothing day. Katie was out and about so I was in the apartment alone. Sat on the balcony a bit. Brilliant sunny day. Karen came over a little after six. We had a beer and chatted. Phil came over at around 8 and we all played a few quick rounds of Munchkin. Amazing how the rules came flooding back. Next came Halo. And Star Wars. Katie came home. The night wore long and I just went to bed instead of blogging.

Sunday:

Tidied apartment. Watched a lot of Six Feet Under. At least 7 episodes. Breaking Bad is back and the episode was a great season starter. Exciting, resolved some stuff, brought up promises of a great new season. And I sat and worked on my poster. It is amazing how this:

takes almost four hours to do. Maybe more. I wasn't keeping track. Ages to draw the font to scale within an 11x17 section. A careful hand to outline. An even carefuller hand to fill in the spaces with ink. The L is totally too heavy and I'm not sure about the W. The lines are uneven, but an organically drawn type will look a lot better printed than one I found on the Internet and blown up. But yeah, took a long long time. Compared to this:
Which took about an hour to draw the body and I'm only about an hour into working. The figure will overlap the text in a two color poster print. I think it will have a cool effect. I'll be adding a lot of linework in her dress, legs, and hair, but there will be no flat blacks. Even the lines around the figure are not fully filled in. It is a lot of fun and I can't wait to start printing it. I think I'll start that process on Tuesday. Hopefully print one layer each day.

My drawing set up is a drawing board that sort of rests in the nook between my desk drawer and the top, and balanced against my waist. I reach over the board to get ink, or fiddle with my computer. My chair is not a good height for me. I oh so wish I had space for a proper drawing desk, but I so rarely work big.


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