January 19th

On Tuesday evening, I printed the 3rd layer of the reduction. The portrait is really looking like a portrait now. Although, I'm having this weird thing where I can't really see this portrait objectively or even subjectively anymore. I've been taking too much time on it. I am still in love with the process of carving and printing, but the actual image doesn't have a lot of what I used to see in it anymore. I will be excited to have it complete (which I plan to have done for my crit on Monday) and to begin another carving. I think the portrait of my mom will maybe help to re-activate the portrait of my dad.

I also printed this third stage on its own like I did with the 1st stage. The image on this third layer is resolved enough to stand alone as a portrait, and its an interesting print. This is starting to remind me of one of my favorite parts of printing...kind of experimenting...printing layers in ways I hadn't planned, and also printing other images on top of these. I plan to print some stages of my mom's portrait over some stages of my dad's portrait...just to see what it looks like. I also want to print (with lots of trans-base to make the image more translucent) some of the images (tractor, wheels) over my dad's portrait.

I've loosened up after my review, and am working at a much better speed. I think I was able to vocalize things I had been thinking that had been making me tentative about my project, and have since been able to look at my project objectively.

Printing: 2.5 hours