Pressure print, on my own

Hey, things are moving right along. I got the MDF, the plexi, adhered the plexi to the MDF using Duromount, which worked beautifully. Here is the base set up in the print bed:



I prepared the plate using the cardstock I got from Diane. The cutouts are the leaves in the mockup. (Picture of mockup in this entry.) You can't see, but the backside of the cardstock had been scrapped in the places where I want the ink to gradually fade to white. And after phone conferences with Diane & Andrew (during a layover in SLC) to make sure I've got everything correct in my head, I went to work.



The print. Obviously, I have not achieved the fade to white, but I'm getting there—you can vaguely make out the shape of the hawk's shadow on the bottom right. And that's done just by removing a layer of the cardstock from the back, leaving the hawk shape intact. The middle of the tree trunk is also supposed to go to white, and I can see a slight difference. More paper removal and experimenting is necessary, but I'm a lot closer than I was yesterday. I'm also a lot more tired. Running the letterpress is physically much harder work, although you're not bent over the press like you do with the gocco, so at least my back doesn't hurt.



I do have a couple of problems that will need conferring with Diane or Andrew, but hopefully, by Wednesday, I'd be printing and not just experimenting.