My friend Mitch and I revealed our initial alphabet challenge pieces on Twitter yesterday. It was an exciting moment for me because I would be able to see his thought process versus mine. By being so open with this project, I thought we would both have very different ideas, but we both created prints—me with a linocut and Mitch with an apple.  Above is an image detailing my process. After cutting my block, I inked my linoleum and printed by hand with a spoon (notice that buff edge!). It was a bit of a trip down memory lane, because I had forgotten much of the printing process.

I wanted my A to feel like a very fancy drop cap. I added as many curves, flourishes, and small details as I could with linoleum. It was fun to form everything by hand instead of tweaking anchor points in Illustrator. Below is a better photograph of the A. I will post the letter B next week, but you can always search #myletterhalf on Sunday if you don’t want to wait.

After discussing my idea with my friend, Mitch (and convincing him to take part in my challenge as well), we changed the time limit to three letters a week. However, this ended up being a lot more time consuming than I originally imagined, so we are going to create one letter a week with our reveals to one another on Sundays via Twitter. Maybe after twenty-six weeks, we’ll be so over this project that we hate it, but if not, we will potentially move on to numbers.

All of that being said, I will post each letter here on Monday mornings, so make sure you check back for the letter A.