Wrangling Les

So. I'm now editioning my second poster, and if I can finish it on the weekend, I'm well on track. It's a short poem by Les Murray, called At the Opera.

Here's my progress:



This is the initial working out of what fonts suit the idea in my head, whether there's enough type, how it all fits together... which eventually turns into this:



Which is actually a lot later in the piece when I remembered to take a photo of the forme.

Here's the initial proofs:



...and here is the final colour, a bit brighter than my initial mix:



I'm in love with this red, a mix of Warm Red and Rubine Red, and big snaps to the nice UniPrint people down the road who let me look at their Pantone swatch book for ideas, since I left mine at home. I'm also in love with the big wooden M, which is my attempt to evoke a faded but loved red velvet theatre curtain.



This is inking from my viewpoint, and this is another:



taken in action by Donald the Special Collections Librarian.

And here are the sexy shots:






Donald thought I might use this block to illustrate the word lorgnette, the central premise of the poem:



But I decided to keep everything typographical, keep away from the readymade images, and make people do what I suspect Les Murray wanted people to do: go and look up the word.

Also, when I was planning this image, I'd been thinking that the whole series would be portrait orientation, that is, taller than wider. But in the staffroom yesterday having morning tea, it struck me like a thunderclap that it would work much better in landscape. This now means that at least one other of the posters will have to be landscape too, or this one will stick out in the series like a sore thumb.

Speaking of sore thumbs, look what this work does to hands:



Broken nails, paper cuts, ripped cuticles, ink stains -- yes, that's the red ink Lady Macbeth look, and I do walk around the library rubbing my hands muttering 'out, damned spot', but I'm rubbing them with baby wipes, which rather undermines the drama.

My feet and legs hurt too, from so much standing. I discovered that there is a massage clinic at the local Polytechnic, and have written an email to them asking about availability. I've also discovered that my college has baths hidden away throughout the building, so I'm going to seek out the closest one and buy some epsom salts. It's hard to sleep from the aching of my muscles, but I'm hopefully toughening up a bit!