Chinatown Gate Giveaway

So for Sketchcrawl 25 Joel & I took on DC's Chinatown district & the Shaw Neighborhood. My most successful sketch came from sitting at a busy intersection by the Chinatown Gate, and while the heavy traffic that often parked right in front of me was annoying, the many kind comments from passersby made it a fun spot to be at.

A gallery owner even happened by and we exchanged cards. So it was good timing all around.

But to my other point- I also decided to use this sketch to try something a little different. As a (former?) print-maker I love the idea of making editions of work. The problem is that I have grown very impatient with the careful and long process of traditional proper printmaking. My impatience has also hindered my motivation to draw complete blocks & neighborhoods for my "giveaway sketches" projects.

So to reconcile my desire to continue both ideas (printmaking & giveaways) with my ever decreasing willingness to... lets face it, do work, I've decided to rethink my giveaway project slightly. Instead of 10 or 12 individual drawings to giveaway, I figure I will make an edition of a single sketch instead. So I came up with a cheap and easy way to make an edition of 12 on paper bags cut to fit my printer.

I made a stencil of the image, so I could apply all the white areas of the image first.

Then I just ran them through my printer to get the blacks and color areas on.

I only mis-printed them twice! And even those came out kind of cool.

So I trimmed trimmed them, bagged them and headed back to Chinatown to find some windshields to drop them on!

One woman ran up to me in a panic thinking I gave her a ticket- a thought I quickly dispelled. And a few minutes after I left an envelope on the Metro van, I saw it's driver pick it up with a confused look, scanning the area for a few minutes looking for whoever put it there.