4.17.2008

I Love Printing on Canvas!

I started printing on the canvas I bought and I am hooked. Weird. I've printed my own photos and wondered why I never experienced that "magic" I always heard about... you know, seeing your image first appear in the swirling chemicals. It was interesting the same way trying a new food is interesting but I wasn't compelled to live in the dark room to experience that little rush day after day. I've always loved working digitally but there is nothing very exciting about printing your own work that way either. The minutia of color management holds me captive until I figure out which way a particular media reacts to my printer then it is just a mechanical action. Heck, all I do at work is print all day long so doing it at home gets a bit redundant. Now, I do not have a very work efficient room. I realized that having my printer tucked behind my drafting table probably wasn't good planning but the room is so small I had no where else to put it.

So maybe it was the effort I had to go through to print on the canvas that made it so satisfying. I had to climb on top of the table and hover over the printer, balanced against the wall to attach the roll of canvas. I couldn't see behind the printer to feed the canvas without falling over so I had to feed
it by feel. It took awhile to figure out far to push the canvas into the slot so the printer would register it. Because of where the table and the printer butt up against each other I also had to keep my hands on the canvas as it came out of the printer so it wouldn't bunch up against the edge of the table. I didn't know what to expect when I got my first glance of the small sliver of color peeking out of the front of the printer. The relief and joy at seeing what I hoped to see was enough to cement my love for using canvas.

I've run through nearly the whole roll and realized I haven't even taken advantage of the texture and unique qualities. I was just so excited I printed my favorite images without much thought to how they would react to canvas. It changes the feel of any image, for better or worse and I'm sure some images just need to stay on paper. But I'm still learning and I'm sure my second roll will see much more adventurous experiments than this roll. Just had to share!