Print Success and Digital Cuts

It took about a week to get my new-to-me printer running. It must've sat for a couple months, and on my first few attempts, I was only able to one of the eight colors to show up. After reading a couple of online articles, and using a little bit of patience (and a fair amount of expensive pinter ink), I got it to work beautifully! Below is the first nozzle check vs. the last. I jumped for joy when that magenta finally showed up!

 I did a print on canvas afterwards, something I've been looking forward to doing. I used my own raw canvas, and coated it with a Golden inkjet ground product I used in the past successfully. The results were descent, though not as exciting as I expected. The fabric is too delicate for this project I think. It was distracting from the realism I'm attempting to create. The contrast was also a little lacking, but that's something I could probably improved with a heavier application of the digital ground product. The picture below lacks the clarity needed to see this, but the grain of the canvas I used was also a little heavy. Something that is thicker with a smoother surface would be a better medium probably. Initially, I was thinking having a texture would be more...clever, having a greater emphasis on the artifice, but now it seems redundant and slightly excessive.

I also recently completed another cut picture piece. I like thinking of them as "digital maps," because the grid I've used reminds me of strands of information I imagine exist in a computer. The idea of jumbling up a digital picture is funny to me, and severs to remind the viewer to the fragility of information. I introduced circle cut outs in this piece as well, which might work. The square shapes enforce the grid pattern more, but the variety is interesting too.