New Year’s a Little late, but not if you are Chinese and not very late if you are in the Eastern Orthodox Church…

 

Yes it is January 12th, but I have the New Year spirit right now.  

Weeks ago I had decided to send out holiday cards, and I had decided to hand make them.  It would be a good project for my holiday break. And it would show others just what the heck I was doing when I quit my job and ran off to art school.

I made a list of 60 recipients.

I bought blank cards made of nice paper from the art store.

I begin to design.

The dove had been a symbol on my mind lately, so I found pictures of doves online and collected them.  I researched some other New year’s symbols online, but still decided on the dove.

I wanted some sort of background to go behind them.  Circles have been on my mind and they are such a lovely symbol, so I googled circles.  Wow, lots of circles out there. 

Then I begin designing my card.  I rested on a design with several doves flying up from the right hand corner.  I couldn’t decide on a back ground yet.

I fell in love with linoleum block prints last semester so I wanted use this medium.  My previous experience was with one set of prints I made in class and a set of cards I made for Kate when she had her baby.  I loved doing both.

 

Class assignment last summer

Baby cards for Kate

 

For class I had to have 3 prints for critique.  I made eight cards for Kate.  Now I was going to make 60 cards, no problem, right?

Well it was a problem.  With this type of print making you carve a little bit of the block away roll a color on and then make a print.  Anything that was carved away for this first round of printing will be the color of the paper, in my case that was white.  My doves were white.  

The catch is that to print your next color you have to carve away more.  So if I wanted to make 60 cards then I had to print 60 of this first layer, then carve more of the block and print again on top of the original layer.  You can never print the first layer after you have carved for the second layer.

So what’s the problem?  I needed to decide on colors and to decide on colors I needed to know what my back ground would be and 60 was a lot of prints to make if I ended up not liking the color I originally decided on.

It was a big committment.

I looked at my circle options again.

I looked at colors.  I love colors.  I never feel at a loss with color.  I was at a loss with colors.

I allowed myself to agonize for a couple days.

It seems simple, it sounds simple, it looks simple now that I write it, but I was really started to get stressed and depressed about it.

I realized I needed to take some pressure off myself.  First, I bought some thank you cards.  I had some thankyous I needed to do and I had thought I would make them special by having an original art work for the card–but this was just unnecessary.  

I bought some nice cards and it was fun shopping for them and it was good research too.  

Next pressure release.  I would do a set of 20 instead of 60 to start.  This would either mean that I would have to do another run or two with another design or try to recreate the design, or shorten my list.  I would save those decisions for later.

I picked a color (an orangy yellow) and did the first layer of printing.  Things were looking okay.  Then I had to decide on a background design and another color.

In the meantime I had set up some of my favorite circle designs to rotate through on my wall paper.  So by now I had noticed which ones I was most attracted to.

There was one that was some sort of mathematically generated nesting arcs.  I begin by printing the design on a transparency and then messed with the scale and overlaid it on my first layer, experimenting with different orientations. 

I found one I liked and then set about carving it into my block.  I still hadn’t decided on a color for the overlay design.

What I am noticing now is how much harder this is than in class.  First, the genre of news years related designs felt constraining.  In class I had picked a photo that interested me and used that as inspiration.  It didn’t matter what its content said.  This time I wanted a design that was visually appealing and expressed hope for a new year and wasn’t a cliche.  It was hard.  Secondly, this one mattered more.  Again it was a bigger commitment.  In class its an assignment and I am enough of an over achiever to take assignments seriously, but I had a different sort of emotional investment in this.

I did the safe thing–which I wouldn’t normally do in class–I printed another color of yellow on top of the darker orange yellow.  I did several of these.  The result was okay, good even.  But there wasn’t enough contrast.  I agonized.  I tried a blue.  It was too much contrast.  I had really wanted to do something with green.  Green and Yellow are these new year’s colors?  But then again if I went with traditional then it gets cliche.  

I did a green print.

I liked it, but I wondered and I still wonder, will people think it strange for a New Year’s card.  

So by the end I had 17 good printed cards, some were yellow and yellow, and some were yellow and green and a couple were even yellow and blue.

Now what, do I work on another design?  Do I cut my list down?  Do I send out all of the original design or just one color scheme or another?  Do I even want to send these out as new year’s card’s I could save them for just cards to send whenever?

This happens to me, I get overwhelmed by decisions.  I decided to think on it a couple days.  More than a couple days went by and I am kicking myself for it.  Why do I make things so hard?  Why haven’t I just done something by now?  It was a self esteem freefall.

This morning I decided to go for it.  I went through my list of 60, picked out immediate family and a few people I owed a special thanks to and got to 17 and decided to go for it.  I should add that I made a couple calls to Mom to help with the list whittling–Thanks Mom.  Then I had to make another because the only thing I could think of to say inside was SOOOO corny.  Was it really corny or was I being overly critical.  Mom’s assessment, “It’s not terrible.”  

Again to the internet.  I found some new year’s cards and found my inspiration.  One person did get the cheesy version–sorry Diane.  

Then I was off, slowly and carefully at first, but by number 12 I was rolling.  And I felt good.  I imagined people opening them and feeling good and I felt good.  Happy New Year I said to myself.

Here is the final product, both color versions.

 

I have often felt like there were strings on my heart.  They wrap around binding and cutting sometimes, other times pulling me away, holding me back.  

 

This card making seems like a simple thing but all those questions, my insecurities, my worries.  These are the strings on my heart.  And I want to cut them.  

This is as close as I can get to a new year’s resolution.

But I must remember that I’m not just making holiday cards or completing an assignment or applying for a job–I am working on those strings.  So I must be patient with myself if it seems to take longer than I think it should.  I have so much work to do sometimes unraveling the strings and separating them from the things I should keep.

So in the new year I pledge to keep working with myself, be patient, come up with solutions for my dilemmas and reach out for help when I’m stuck even if it seems like I should be able to do it on my own.

May this year bring all of you new joys and new hopes in 2009.