loco for gocco

i finally busted out the gocco machine i bought months ago. i've been hoarding it, waiting for the perfect image to reproduce. (bulbs can only be used once and screens can not be cleaned and re exposed with a new image) knowing this, i may have never used it! well i decided to bite the bullet and find a decent image to give it a test run. i watched a few "how-to" videos this morning and this afternoon i started the presses.

this is the original image i got from istockphoto. it's a simple, clean image that i converted to grayscale. at first i had it completely black and white but i noticed while i was thumbing through the example booklet that came with the machine it had grayscale screens on some of the images. (all the instructions are in japanese, hence the video watching) so i went back and added a 30% and 50% screen on the trees. unfortunately, when i exposed the image, i lost all the grayscale screens. not sure if it can't do screens or if my screens were too light. i'll figure it out eventually.

the image is still decent so i went ahead with test run. i spread brown ink on the screen and began printing. it takes some getting used to. knowing how much ink to use and making sure it's spread evenly. i was able to print about 20 in the brown and after cleaning and reapplying red ink, printed about 20 more. i used the ink sparingly. it's supposed to print up to 80 with a good inking. all in all it was a good test run. now that i've started, i may not stop.