Failures

I'd intended to make my own Christmas cards, either a linocut or my own photos printed onto cards, as I mentioned here.

Photo cards are now, as with everything else, expensive so I thought a linocut would be more fun. And I know that if it had worked out, it would have been.

I follow a lot of artists online and something I don't see often is posts or remarks about a failed project. Well, my linocut Christmas cards were a failure and I'm posting about it!

I drew something I liked, carved it, and the first printing was a failure due to globby ink. It separated and seemed to fill all the cuts. After an hour, I gave up.

The second try failed too - the ink went on patchily. I could not get even coverage. And this is all new ink; the only thing I can think of is that the studio gets cold this time of year and that probably affected it.

The third try, everything seemed to work okay - the prints still looked bad and the cut itself is part of the problem, I think.

I'll keep the lino carving. Maybe in the future, I can fix the problems.

If you're an artist and can't make a particular project work, you aren't alone!