Burst Flood 2

The whale stayed on the water (sorry I mean wall) in the old room.



As the survivors lay out on the floor. Thoughts of safety after the outburst. Little did they know....



....I entered the room this time to find the prints had travelled from the far side of the room and now lay in a pile by the door. Maybe they had been trying to escape...



Maybe they had been trying to escape the water pouring in. Sheered in two and at an angle to where it had been, the guilty pipe swung. Right above where I had put the fish and the eagles and the panthers just a few days ago......



Once again they all lay in ruins and told me how the water must've got deep enough to carry them so far to the corners of this room...




But in a swinging chair. Hi above the flood water was one witness. Slightly wet to say the least as they had been underneath the broken pipe and sat firm. I brought this one home to dry out......

Oldfield Press

Oldfield Press

Oh No!!
I had finished the next set of 'Strength' prints and just had the titles to put onto the other when I got a call from the landlord of the mill.
'There's water coming through your wall into the next dorr unit' he said.
'I think you should come down'.
I went to the mill and he was already stood with the door ajar and a worried look.
'I think it is worse than just a little leak', he told me as I approached.
As I went in all I could think about was the hours and hours of time carving the blocks and wondering what the damage would be.
Luckily the blocks were not in the vecinity of the burst sprinkler head and had somehow managed to avoid the water running through the roof space from dripping onto them.
It was so cold that the floor had turned the escape water into ice and there was no light or electric.
I went to the wall where the 'Fish' were drying and found some dry, some drenched and some that had soaked up the water, frozen and fallen to the floor in a ripped, smashed heap.
The panthers near the piano.....well lets just say they kept the piano slightly drier and sacrificed themselves (showing true 'Courage') to the incoming tide.
Even some of the eagles didn't fly high enough to avoid the floods.
All in all I think I was lucky as the majority of the prints could be saved. Some now tell the tale of the winter of 2010 and bear the scars thus making them unsalable but none he less, in a strange way I feel kinda attatched to these ones now.
I will enclose the chaos pictures for your perusal and please be assured that what did not kill us will definat
ely make us more determined if nothing else.


The guilty Sprinkler

The frozen Arab Press

The sodden printshop

Presses drying out

Surviving prints drying out.

Choosing the colours wisely

Well..... Cos' It ain't been updated doesn't mean I am doing nowt'.
New design and now just showing a few of the colour variations before going to print.
Hope you like it as it has been a hoot getting this far





:)

Make the bed and lay in it...

Been a while in the studio printing the 3 designs off for sale. I have managed to get them into Heart Gallery in Hebden Bridge which is great as two of them sold whilst they were on the floor waiting to go on the wall.

I also signed up with http://www.printmaker.co.uk/

It puts our name in another list of printers. I have noticed it isn't all just open up an etsy account and wait for the orders. Sayong that though the price has gone up as the shop suggested we limit each addition to 150 copies.....I wonder if the blocks will last that long??

I have decided to post a few old prints from the last year or so too so as to keep some sort of momentum and hopefully gain a few more followers of the blog.

we've had thefun and now for the games

I have opened a deviant art account aswell as finally getting the first shop up and running. We opened accounts with www.folksy.com/shops/oldfieldpress

We found this to be the quickest and simplest but that could be down to us as individuals rather than the sites themselves.

We have to photograph and upload and set up banking aswell as work out postage costs and packaging expenses. Both UK and worldwide.

I hope we haven't missed anything out but this is a bit like trying to regsister the blocks to the right place and we will learn when we start to peel back the paper to see what we have.

Here are some more pics of the prints as they are the shopping sites.

over and out for now.

1st run done

finally printed the titles on the bottom of the first set of print I have ready for sale.
Wish me luck and here is a set of photos to show how each colour is individually printed.

The ink, the block and the press
The paper on the inked block.
Next I put two or more sheets of paper on the top to act as a form of blanket and also to stop the paper slipping. Then I roll the press over the top of the blocka nd back again.

And there we have it. For the posters it is repeat process and try not to miss the place the colour has to sit.

Pressing Issues

The blocks are cut, the ink is drying and the posters are now just about ready to put up on our new shopfront...Well, our etsy and our folksy...Maybe even an ebay??

So it looks like we're nearly ready for take off!!

We will be putting out a run of the LaikaDog rocket posters first. Hopefully closely followed by our Eagle of Freedom...

Here are a few of the other blocks that have been carved so far in this series of prints...

Off to ebay now to sort out an account...

Setting up shop

Aswell as printing out some new woodcuts we have been thinking it would be great to make them available to the world. Therefore we have mostly been setting up shops like etsy

www.etsy.com/oldfieldpress

and Folksy,

www.folksy.com/oldfieldpress

Still waiting for the bank stuff to come through and so in the meantime we are getting more stock printed up. In keeping with the animals in tattoos we now have our new Panther edition. Main pic is cut and being printed now and the ink should be dry and the poster should be available as soon as the bank and accounting stuff is finished.

Hopefully we will soon be able to offer real affordable art to everyone.

Get your fingers out

Well,

I suppose that we do need to get our finger out and get on with some more printing.

All the presses are set up but still no rollers on the Arab but I have been loving our Farley proofing press lately. Had a bit of time carving big bits of wood to make some posters and managed not to trap the digits under the rollers. I am going on holiday tomorrow but will continuing with this series of tattoo posters I have started. Eagle done and Panther on its way...Oh and a quick LaikaDog poster to go with the new album and all the printing that has involved...

Hope you Laika the posters so far......

A purpose in life...

Well.....Well, a lot of tidying and sorting. Chases and boxes of letters and lead all put into order in the cabinets we have. Whats the point? It is 12 point, odds and sods with a load of 10 point to keep us on our toes.

But eventually it is done.

As is the LaikaDog album (hint hint www.facebook.com/laikadog) so what a great task to print a slack handful of cd covers and labels.

That is a purpose for which we are equipped so please take a look at the pics even if you can't hear the tunes (yet).