So for the next few weeks there will be a disruption in my normal posting habits because I am taking a Letterpress class with Kyle van Horn! It's really really interesting and I have learned a ton in only four days. It's a three week long course, with each class starting at 9:30 am and ending at 4:30 pm. We have three assignments we have to finish before class ends- a set of postcards, a few sets of business cards, and a calendar. Because the process can be so time consuming it is recommended that we either come to class early (around 8:45) or stay late (yesterday I stayed there printing till 7). It's tough on my feet- for the last two days I have been standing almost consistently for around 15 hours total. Ouch! But I am starting to get the hang of putting my sets together/setting them up on the press and luckily Kyle is a really patient teacher and helps me along the way.
The first image is the Vandercook letterpresses we are using. They are pretty old but beautiful and do their job fantastically. Next up are the lock ups that Kyle designed/set up for our syllabus covers. After that is a collection of the first letterpresses that I pulled- some syllabus covers and some text (everyone was asked to use the fonts available to them to make a 2+ line phrase- I did "This too shall pass)!
The following image is the mixing station, where I was mid way through mixing my final ink colors. Last but not least are some examples of my first assignment, a postcard. I have two different versions- one is on off-white/warm white paper, while the other is on "white-white"/cool white paper. I have about 60 of them in total. Apologies for the low quality pictures of the final versions of my piece- I used my iPhone camera as these are going to stay in the classroom till my class ends, and the lighting is terrible in the room I took the photographs in. Once my class is over I will re-shoot everything with my Nikon with good lighting.
