Research collection and book draft; practical making remains the test.
My wife, Katalin, taught me printmaking. She is incredibly beautiful and an amazing artist and printmaker. This work owes its beginning to her.
I wanted to follow an image all the way into a printed object: a design, a relief block, ink on paper and eventually an edition. That led me into traditional linocut and woodblock work alongside the possibility of cutting blocks with my CNC machine.
The research grew into a substantial collection and a book draft. It spans design, materials, hand cutting, machine preparation, printing and the artists who have worked through those problems. The size is less interesting than what happened when I started checking the confident parts.
Comparing the initial research with printmakers’ books exposed explanations that sounded reasonable but were not supported by the sources. One explanation for why an edge is bevelled had to be corrected. Other apparent rules turned out to be disagreements between practitioners. Keeping those differences visible was more useful than forcing them into a single tidy answer.
Claude did substantial work with me on gathering, drafting and revising this material. My job included deciding what deserved another check and refusing to let an attractive explanation stand in for evidence. The work of the printmakers and authors remains theirs; the collection and manuscript need to keep those credits attached.
The next boundary is physical. Reading can help me ask better questions about a block, a mark or an ink, but a manuscript cannot establish how my material and machine will behave. A test print has a different kind of authority. I am treating the writing as a developing resource, not as proof that every workshop question is settled.
This is one of the clearest connections between my software work and making things. Both reward curiosity, and both punish assumptions that survive because nobody tried them against reality.