Happy Lunar New Year

snow covered lanterns are everywhere in downtown Flushing

Okay, so the lunar new year (or, to be less inclusive, 'Chinese New Year'... sorry Korean friends) isn't until next week, but I anticipate busy-ness and not much blogging time-- classes start up in just 2 days-- so here's to striking preemptively & wishing you all a happy one.

It's the year of the rabbit.
So, a rabbit! 

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In other news, I tried to do some test prints this weekend. 
It was... a re-learning experience. Set up and clean up was quite a hassle, as expected. After getting my giant sheet of Stonehenge paper ripped down into smaller sheets-- which was a project in itself-- I got my ink and brayer and glass sheet out:

Rolled out some ink, got out the linoleum block Colin carved, inked it, printed it. See below:

I present to you, the final print (which is upside down from when it was initially created-- but we decided that it was better upside down!). 
Personally, I like it. Colin thinks I'm just humoring him when I say that, but I like it. It's, like, non-representational anti-aesthetic pure form imagery that, like, challenges our ideas of negative versus positive space, maaan. 

Some other test prints done that day:

None of which are perfect, but it's okay. It's a learning process. I didn't do too many prints because after each inking, the lino blocks were getting a lot of ink buildup... The ones done later turned out better than the first few ones though. It's just a matter of getting the hang of how to apply enough ink to the brayer and how to roll it on the block to cover it evenly. That was the main problem with the whole process-- getting too much ink on some parts of the block (where carved details were lost) and not enough ink, if any, on other parts. 

I have lots more paper and ink left, so I'll try inking again another day & see if they come out better. In the meanwhile, I have more drawings to carve as well: 

Lots to keep me busy with. 
Happy (early) year of the hare, everybody!