The demo print that finally stopped scaring the life out of me
There's a print I did as a demo at a market two summers back, a little heron standing in a puddle, and I pulled it while a crowd of people stood watching me carve. Hands sweating, chatting away while I was praying I wouldn't slice clean through the lino and ruin it in front of the whole town. I gave the first few pulls away to people who stood there the whole time, the patient ones.
Anyway. This week I framed one of the good pulls and it's on the wall in the studio now, and I keep glancing at it and feeling grand about it for the first time. It's not the best print I've ever made, not close. But it's the one where I stopped being terrified of doing it badly in public, and that turned out to be a bigger thing than the print itself.
Framed it in a bit of oak scrap I found in the shed, which is very on brand for me. The matting is wonky. I don't care.
Anyone else got a piece that matters for the doing of it, not the look of it?
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I love that you framed the demo pull and not the "best" one. There's something about the pieces that carry that nervous energy that end up meaning more later. I have a watercolour I did at a sketch-out where I was so jittery about drawing in front of strangers that I forgot to breathe, and the line work is honestly shaky, but I still look at it and remember exactly what that morning felt like. It has more of the place in it than my careful studio ones do.
Also the bit about giving the early pulls to the people who waited, that's lovely. They'll have them up somewhere too, probably. 🙂
Ah now, that's exactly it. The nervous ones carry the room they were made in. A careful print done on a quiet Tuesday with the radio on, sure that's grand, but it doesn't have the smell of the market and the crowd in it.
And the shaky linework, listen, that's the honest bit. When you're gripping the brush too tight and you know it, the marks tell the truth about the morning. I've got a hare I carved during a bad stretch years back, the cuts are all over the place in places, but I wouldn't trade it for a clean one. It's got the weather in it.
Glad you get it about the pulls too. I gave one to a fella who stood there the whole time with a toddler on his shoulders, the kid watching me like I was a magician. If that print's not on his fridge somewhere I'll be disappointed in the man. 🙂