What Printmaking Taught Me About Taking It Slow
On more than one occasion, I’ve felt overwhelmed by the current state and pace of tech. It feels as if every time I go online, I see yet another ad, post, or news article talking about the latest features of Adobe Creative Suite… or all the newest updates to Apple’s products… and of course, the amazing(ly eerie) things ChatGPT and other AI / machine-learning programs can do.
While I hope technology continues to make life a little easier than it would be otherwise, something in my gut makes me hesitate to dive headfirst and embrace new tech too earnestly. As tech makes it so that certain tasks can be done faster, I wonder if there’s an underlying assumption that goes something like:
“Since this process can now be done faster, it must be done faster!”
That underlying assumption can then become an unspoken expectation, which wouldn’t surprise me if that unspoken expectation then creates anxiety in those whose job it is to work with new tech.
Just imagine that annoying voice yelling,
“With the software we have at our disposal, this task can be done in 5 minutes, so why can’t you do it and the other 100 tasks we assigned you flawlessly in 3 minutes, huh? HUH?!”
It can be easy to forget that the creative process deserves better than that. It’s good to allow your mind (and even your body) to wander, take your time, and let creativity find you at its own pace. It can be easy to forget that, for all the ways our current tech has made life faster and easier, we did manage to live decently without it, once upon a time.
Whether you’re developing social connections or nurturing creativity, going at a slower pace and focusing on one thing at a time can be peaceful and mentally healthy. It can make you less likely to take valuable things for granted.
Along with deleting Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram back in 2018, that nostalgia and desire for non-immediate gratification also led me to a printmaking workshop hosted by LACMA in MacArthur Park this past weekend. Why not, after all? As of this writing, I’m currently in-between jobs, doing some self-reflection, and eager to get back out into the world after several years of hunkering down and spending most of my time working from home due to a global pandemic (which I hope is truly ending). After seeing LACMA post about the workshop on LinkedIn, it seemed like a wonderful opportunity to meet like-minded folks in-person and enjoy a Saturday afternoon.
Two other people and I were the first to arrive. All the necessary materials were provided, and the three staff members facilitating the workshop were incredibly kind and helpful. After a quick explanation on the basics of printmaking, we were then encouraged to explore the gallery that the workshop was held in before making our own prints. The gallery’s current exhibit showed various examples from the early 20th century of how printmaking / linocut was used in political art. We were to use both the subject matter and technique as inspiration for our own creations.
The images displayed in the gallery were psychologically and emotionally heavy, especially the ones illustrating what the Holocaust was like during World War II. And the detail with which the artists depicted these horrors was humbling, inspiring, and heartbreaking all at once. When thinking about the image I wanted to create that day, there was no shortage of modern day crises I could shed light on — Russia’s war against Ukraine, continued global LGBT oppression (particularly against transgender people), systemic racism and misogyny, or the treatment of migrants at US southern border. However, the workshop was only for a few hours that day, and any of the aforementioned subjects deserved way more time for me to really develop a concept that would make viewers think more deeply about each subject.
So instead, with the limited time I had, and with my especially limited printmaking skills, I thought:
“What’s a concept that would be relatively easy enough for me to create in 2–3 hours? What’s something I can be proud of, and something that might leave a lasting positive impact on the viewer?”
With a clipboard, a piece of scratch paper, and pencil in hand, I found myself strolling around the gallery, feeling somewhat nervous about having to create an image with a technique I literally hadn’t used since college (which, for me at this point, was over a decade ago). Here was my thought process:
“Ok, breathe. Calm down.
You know that printmaking is like drawing in reverse: whatever you carve onto your canvas will show up as white in the final image, whereas any part of the canvas you leave alone will show up as black, if you’re making your print with black paint.
So imagine drawing on a black piece of paper with a white pencil: you’re drawing the highlights in, and the way to make this easy is to have an image where you’ll have to do minimal carving / highlight drawing.
That means creating an image with plenty of untouched negative space…
…untouched… negative space?
Wait, that’s it — outer space!!!
Hmm… OK, you might have something here! But you can’t just have the final image be a mass of empty black.
Well… drawing circles is easy! And there’s plenty of those shapes in outer space, right? Sooo…
How about the planet Earth? Specifically, what if you drew planet Earth the way it would look from the surface of the moon? That’s another circle right there!
Now, perhaps there’s some sort of message you can tie in?”
By the time I made my way back to my seat, my initial sketch was complete, and I found my answer:
For those unfamiliar with Scripture, “GEN 1:31” is shorthand for the book of Genesis, chapter 1, verse 31:
“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”
Of course, when these words were first written, humanity didn’t understand the cosmos the way we do today. And so, while one can look at life on Earth as good and worthy of love, becoming aware of the rest of the universe inevitably leads one to ask:
“But is anyone else out there?”
When breathing life into creation, did God stop at Earth? Considering the vastness of space, it would be strange — and a little disappointing — if true. Since God declared that it is “not good for man to be alone,” then surely it can’t be good for humanity to be all alone in the universe.
Without having a concrete answer as to whether anyone else might be out there, I nevertheless thought the concept would resonate with someone asking the same question, and decided to move forward with it. What gives the image an extra air of uniqueness is that many of the linocut printmaking examples I saw in the workshop gallery seem to have been created before the Space Race. The early artists who pioneered this technique probably wouldn’t have thought to depict what Earth looked like from the surface of the moon. It would’ve been about as likely as the great Bob Ross painting a portrait, and it tickled me to think about it.
If only that kind of humor made the whole printmaking process simple! Here’s why it wasn’t:
- The rubber block I was carving into was significantly smaller than the initial sketch I did on scratch paper, so I had to re-sketch the image again on a smaller piece of scratch paper that was the exact same size as the rubber block. This would help me get a better sense of how all the elements of the drawing would fit into the final image.
2. After recreating the smaller sketch, I then had to remember to carve the mirror image of that onto the block. Had I redrawn my exact sketch directly onto the block, the text on the final print would’ve showed up incorrectly (think along the lines of this scene from Mean Girls). As a result, I had to write all the text in my image backwards… and not using a pencil, but a carving knife! Thankfully, the workshop volunteers showed me an inking technique that made it somewhat easy to trace the mirror image of my mini sketch onto the rubber block before carving it.
3. The details inside Earth and the “But is anyone else out there?” text at the bottom were a particularly tight fit. I had to use the narrowest carving knife that was available for those details, and even that was just barely thin enough. Carving the outlines of continents into a minuscule planet Earth, and writing tiny backwards text with a carving knife onto a rubber block had my fingers and wrists aching! As someone who hadn’t used these tools or this technique in years, I had to pause at several moments, give my hands a good shake and exhale with an audible “Whew!” before continuing.
By the time I had finished carving, several of the other attendees had finished long ago and hung their own prints to dry. Thankfully, though, carving was the hardest part of the process for me — the remaining steps were fairly easy:
- Pour a small amount paint onto an acrylic panel laid on a flat surface.
- Take a roller and load up said roller with the paint.
- Now that the roller is loaded up with paint, apply it to the rubber block. The paint will not touch any parts of the block that were carved into.
- Place the rubber block face-up on a flat surface, lay a thick piece of paper on top of it, and make sure the paper is centered.
- Press down on the paper and rub with a firm flat object for about 20–30 seconds.
6. Lift up the paper, et voila — the ink you rolled onto the carved rubber block has now been transferred onto the paper!
From there, I could repeat the process and make more prints. Thankfully, the text showed up correctly, and one of the workshop volunteers loved it so much, he asked if I could make an additional print and autograph it for him. I happily obliged, of course (thanks Joel)!
Overall, this was a wonderful experience. I enjoyed working alongside an easygoing group of workshop attendees of all ages and skill levels, where we constantly chatted and encouraged each other throughout the whole process. It was yet another reminder that, long before I got paid to do it, I create art because I love it. What’s more, I love creating it alongside others who love art too.
It was also refreshing to create art in a completely non-digital way again. Where most of the paid creative work I do is done with keyboard shortcuts and mouse-clicks, this project required me to slowly work with my hands in ways I hadn’t done in years, and it felt good to do so.
In addition, while I’ve built a career on using a variety of digital tools, I needed to be reminded that, even with none of those digital tools at my disposal, I could still create something worthwhile. Plus, the “imperfections” of this process made it so each print had a unique character, and looked more human than it would’ve otherwise.
Knowing that this process cannot be duplicated so that each print looks 100% identical, that you can look at each one and know it passed through human hands with care and thoughtfulness… I can’t help but love the results, and hope I get more opportunities to do something like this in the future!
If you’re interested in attending a workshop like this, check out LACMA’s event calendar!
