the excitement, frustration, and hard work of AltProcess is making me write a book

(polymer) Photogravure Book

The Internet is full of wonderful ideas, accurate descriptions, and helpful advice.  It is also full of repeated inaccuracies, incomplete descriptions, and answers that don’t address the question asked.  Searching through all of the information, to determine which is useful and which is not, can be a lengthy and frustrating process.  I have been through the process for the past three years while becoming increasingly proficient at making photogravures with KM73 polymer plates.  I have been asked about my workflow enough that I have finally decided to write a book about it.

I have seven goals with this instruction book:

1. Assemble information that is more comprehensive than anything I have yet to discover in my years of research into this process.

2. Reveal my entire refined workflow, sharing all tricks that I have learned, adding comments on some (good) techniques that I do not use.  I acknowledge that each artist’s workflow is unique, and that approaches other than my own can achieve similarly excellent results.

3. Photograph as many steps as possible.  My intent will be to have the photography be so comprehensive that some people may not need to read the text of the book.  As a teacher, I want to engage more than one learning style.  My aim is to make the photography as comprehensive as the text.

4. The first page of each chapter will act as a workflow summary that is both a good introduction to that stage of the workflow as well as a quick reference for artists after they have read the book.

5. I hope this book will inspire more artists to share their unique workflows with more detail.  Some good information exists on the Internet, but from far too few people.  My goal is to expand knowledge sharing within the artistic community and encourage other artist to either write their own book or be involved with an expanded second edition of this book.

6. Keep the purchase price of the book reasonable.  I believe this can be done by publishing 2 editions: one black & white and one in full color.

7. As a way to encourage more colleges and universities to experiment with this medium, this book will contain an example syllabus based on a 15-week semester.  It will also have an outline for two-day weekend workshops.

Schedule:

May – Outline for book
June – Principle photography while I create new gravures for the book
July – writing, re-writing, peer review and feedback, more re-writing
August – final editing
September - publishing