Monday, January 26, 2009

Drawing Comparisons

Skills I acquired getting my BFA in printmaking that proved to be quite useful whilst making my own wedding invitations:
  • the ability to quickly and neatly tear one very large sheet of paper into many smaller pieces of paper
  • the mindset to be able to focus on a tedious, repetitive process for a ridiculously long period of time

Things about making my own wedding invitations that reminded me very much of being a printmaking student:
  • getting ink all over my hands
  • giving pep-talks to inanimate objects
  • a feeling of deep exhaustion coupled oddly with hunger and a sore back that all combine into a sensation of spiritual desolation
  • becoming progressively less and less exacting about page margin standards

Things about being a printmaking student not at all like making my own wedding invitations:
  • having no responsibilities other than making prints
  • having at least a semester to accomplish anything worth looking at

Things about being a printmaking student I missed very much whilst making my own wedding invitations:
  • a tear bar
  • being surrounded by a whole slew of other people who, like me, secretly really do care an awful lot about page margins

Questions raised both by getting my BFA in printmaking and making my own wedding invitations I suspect will never be answered to my satisfaction:
  • why does the slovenly test-print on a scrap always come out better than the carefully-prepared-for final run on good paper?
  • why am I doing this?

Things I might have done had I gotten a degree in something more practical than printmaking:
  • landed a real job after graduation
  • hired someone else to make my wedding invitations

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