Christmas Cards

I finally bought a print gocco machine a couple of months ago. It seem like they really are completely discontinuing them and they are really not available in any american online shops or brick and mortar stores anymore. I bought a used B6 machine from japan on ebay. I guess the B6 is the old version of the PG5 but is basically the same and was going for way less than new PG5's on ebay. Mine was $99 I think but I was seeing some PG5's go for more than $300. Anyway I figured this was my last chance to get a gocco so I went for it.

Mine was used so it was missing some screens and bulbs and I was afraid to waste what I had just playing around with it. The bulbs and screens are also being discontinued but I was able to find a US based art supply store that still had some so I stalked up a little bit.

The first thing that I printed were Christmas cards. I used this tutorial on the small object blog. It was one of the few ones I could find for the B6 model and my instructions were all in Japanese so I really needed it.

I thought I was all prepared. I had drawn a picture, photocopied and reduced it at work to the right size, and was ready to start printing. Then I red that if you use a photocopy you need to used the blue filter so you don't get too much carbon on the screen. I searched and searched but my used model didn't seem to still have the blue filter. There was another option though. I could use the carbon pen instead of a photocopy and then I wouldn't need the blue filter. So I retraced my picture with the carbon pen and tried out the machine. It worked sort of but some of the lines blured together and the solid black areas were splotchy. I also thought I had had red ink but didn't so I used green which turned out kind of odd. Here is the result.

I wasn't too happy but I was paranoid to waste another screen on the same christmas card if it still wasn't going to turn out. I did some research and found redid the image so that there weren't any more solid areas and the lines were spaced farther apart. I photocopied it again and decided to not worry about the blue filter.

It turned out much better. Not quite perfect but pretty good. I printed them in black and then water colored in the had and crab in red.