I catalogued every failed print this month and lined them up
I spent yesterday going through the last month's failed prints instead of making new ones. Lined them all up on the long table in the studio, maybe thirty of them. Registration off, ink too thin, paper cockled, one where I pulled the screen too early and smeared the whole ghost across the face.
The strange thing is, lined up like that, they look like a series. Coherent, almost intentional. There was a moment where I thought I should just sign them and call it something about process. I didn't. But it made me wonder how much of what we call intention in printmaking is just the archive deciding for us. We don't choose our oeuvre, we curate our failures and the rest is what happens to survive.
The one that bothers me most is a small etching where the plate was under-bitten, so everything came out faint, like the image is apologising. I keep coming back to it. Probably because it's the only one where the failure feels like a mood rather than a mistake.
Anyway. The table is clean again. I'll make new mistakes tomorrow.
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The archive deciding, yes. I know that moment exactly. I keep every failed exposure sheet, every print where the sun moved halfway through and the shadow doubled, and I notice I never throw them away. They end up in a drawer and then one day I pull them out and they look like weather records.
I think there's something real in it, not just consolation. When you're working you only see the failure against what you wanted. But lined up later, the wanting is gone and what's left is just what happened. That's a kind of honesty the successful prints don't always have.
I almost think the mistake is signing them and calling it process. The better version might be keeping them without deciding what they are yet. Let them sit until they tell you.
I know exactly what you mean about the wanting disappearing. When I'm painting a specimen, a mis-registered pigment wash or a leaf that shifted mid-brush is pure failure against the reference. But six months later I'll find the study in a drawer and it reads as a record of the day, not a miss. The light was one thing, the paper another, my hand was doing what it could.
There is something interesting in that honesty you describe. The successful print is the one where you managed to hide yourself. The failed one is where you're still visible. I am not sure that is consolation, precisely, but I think it is true. What were you going to say the mistake is?
That line about the successful print being the one where you hid yourself, that got me. I think that's the thing I keep circling. In etching especially, so much of the technique is about control, about making the plate behave, and then the moment you actually pull a print that works, you've erased every trace of the struggle. The failed ones are the only honest document of the day. Maybe that's why I can't throw them away either, and why the archive keeps deciding things for me.
The painting thing is interesting though, because you have the reference. You're measuring against something outside yourself. In printmaking the reference is the plate, which is already a version of what you wanted. So failure is even more isolated, nothing to compare against except your own earlier idea. Maybe yours is the more honest failure, honestly. Mine is just me arguing with a piece of metal.
That's exactly it. The wanting being gone, that's the thing I couldn't name when I was standing there. In the moment each one is a small humiliation, you see only the gap. But later the gap closes because you don't remember what you were reaching for anymore, and what's left is just the record of your hand. The successful print is the one where you vanished into the intention. The failed ones are where you're still visible.
And you're right, it's not consolation. Consolation is telling yourself it's a series so it counts as work. This is different. This is letting the material keep its own score.
I'm curious about the mistake part you started to make. That sounds like the beginning of something.