It was cardboard cut printing today, and the teacher thought this washing line image would work.
I wasn’t sure which contrast polarity to choose, whether to make the line and drops dark and the background light, or the other way round. The trouble is, if I made the background dark, then I would have to carve away the cardboard of the background areas, and leave lots of tiny islands of cardboard for the droplets. I didn’t think this was practical, so I chose to carve away the washing line and punch holes for the droplets.
It didn’t work. I was hoping to get an interesting abstract image but instead I got something that was neither a washing line nor a striking abstract. There just wasn’t enough contrast. In hindsight, I should have carved out the background, as in the original plan, but not worried about leaving tiny islands for rain drops. Instead, I should have punched tiny circles out of some scrap cardboard and glued them on the background once it was carved out.
I didn’t produce an image I liked, but I did have an interesting journey, for two reasons. Firstly, I learned what works in this kind of printing, and learned more than if I’d created a successful print. I made a mistake because I hadn’t been able to visualise the final print from the plate, and therefore hadn’t cut the plate the most effective way.
Secondly, I liked the way I chose an open-ended image. The others had produced lovely images of vegetables and flowers, but I’d call those convergent subjects. It’s like you’re at the base of the triangle aiming for the apex – the image of that mushroom or pumpkin. Along the way you could try different techniques but ultimately you’re aiming for a figurative picture of something.
In a divergent subject you start at the apex and broaden out. You take a single image and start improvising based on it, with no desire to represent anything, but just to produce something striking and haunting. I didn’t get there today, but I felt that with another hour I could have.
Back at home, I found the Linux install was too buggy to sustain, so I reset the whole laptop back to Windows. I decided to not buy a new laptop, and to stop playing around with Linux. I’ve uninstalled the crapware from Windows and I’ll use that.
This all got me thinking about technology. I’d spent the day using presses that never had any bugs or updates, didn’t have any crapware or popups, didn’t have any subscription models or lock-ins, and had worked beautifully for 150 years. Is our technology so advanced? Or rather, are our expectations for our products and lifestyle so much better? It’s much less stressful and time-consuming to use technology that leaves you alone, that lasts a lifetime, and that just works.
I’m thinking of finding a way of making websites that’s as simple as possible, with as few dependences as possible, and that will need no maintenance or any technical skills to edit.