Impatience and Earning Chops

Experience. I know from other crafts that I've learned that it's irreplaceable. And still, I want to learn at warp speed. I wish that every new skill that I try would just jump up and greet me, "Oh, hi! I wondered when you'd get here!"

But alas, it isn't like that. Every day I try to experiment with a tiny variant on an existing skill, pushing slowly and steadily in the direction of my big goals. But every new skill takes three or four days instead. I wring my hands, google for expert answers, and try everything I can to get the new thing to work. Sometimes I walk away defeated (for now!) and try another new skill instead.

I have what, in my naiveté, seemed like a pretty approachable set of goals, but the more I learn the more there is to learn.

[Three days of mostly failed prints]

[Top of the rack has the first layer of a multi-layer print]

[Bottom of the rack is finished work]

I know I'll get where I want to go, mostly because I'm stubborn as heck! The more difficult the task, the fewer the people who will have mastered it. If I just keep at it, eventually I'll be doing things that nobody else has done. I know that it will probably take many years, but I really believe that some day other printmakers will look at what I'm doing and ask themselves, "How is that even possible!?" But I've got an awful lot of failure to endure before I get there.

Master-befuddling skill level isn't even my goal. I'll write a blog post sometime soon and show you the work of folks who inspire me to keep pushing my skills to produce the art that I have in my head.