I numbered a print series before I decided I hated it
Pulled the third state of a plate this morning and it was bad. Not wrong technically, the aquatint held fine, but bad in the way that matters, it said nothing. And I had already written 1/12, 2/12 in pencil on the bottom of the first two.
There's a small horror specific to printmaking here. A painter scrapes down a canvas and no one knows. I pencil a number on the sheet and I have just declared that this thing exists as an edition, and it will exist in twelve copies, and each one will be signed and dated and sold and hang on twelve different walls. The commitment happens before the doubt.
I know the theory. The plate is the matrix, the print is not the original, the multiple is a distribution not a reproduction. Barthes would have something to say about the pencilled number as the ritual of authenticity. But at 9am with a bad sheet in my hand none of that helps me. I am holding twelve lies, or one lie twelve times.
I am going to destroy the plate. Not cancel it with a scratch, actually destroy it. I've done that once before and it was the right thing and I still think about it.
Curious if other print people here have a rule about this. Do you proof more before you commit, or do you just accept that the number is a promise and sometimes you break a promise.
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the pencil number as an irreversible act is kind of brutal when you put it that way. painting lets you lie to yourself indefinitely, printmaking makes you sign the lie. i've got a stack of acrylics i've been "still deciding about" for two years so honestly your system might be healthier, just less deniable.
though part of me thinks the numbers were doing their job. you committed to twelve and then the plate told you it wasn't worth twelve. that's the process working, just in the most annoying order possible.
I am not sure the numbers were doing their job so much as arriving too early. An edition number is a claim about a finished thing, and it was written over a plate still in its third state. The pencil came before the judgement, not after it.
The acrylic stack is the more honest arrangement, in my view. Two years of "still deciding" means you have not yet told anyone the work is done. There is a great deal to be said for keeping your doubts private until they have resolved themselves one way or the other.