Saint Augu(s)tinus of Hippo, patron saint of printers

In the printmaking department we have a little niche where, I assume, once a statue of some sort stood. The first time I saw it it made me think of patron saints and how we should have one. After some research I found that there actually IS a patron saint dedicated to printers and printmakers (and also stumbled upon a discussion about the need for a patron saint dedicated to the printer as an appliance). His name is Augustine of Hippo, Augustinus de Hippo in Latin.

So after a month of vigorous carving in a sheet of MDF I had my cliché complete with faulty spelling of his name which i hope won't keep him from doing his job.

Problem was (of course, there always are problems), it was to big to put through our press... So I ended up printing it by hand with the back of a teaspoon, meticulously rubbing all 7500 square centimetres of it. Twice. 

These prints were just proofs, eventually it will be printed in gold but i have to give my back a bit of a rest before i take on that challenge.

There he is in all of his glory, all 120 centimetres of
it!

Detail of his cloak, representing the four different ways of printing: An etching
pen for intaglio, a block print roller, a lithographic roller and a squeegee for
screen-printing.

Detail of his head and wrongly spelled name.
Since Augutinus lived quite some time ago there
were no accurate descriptions of his appearance
so I borrowed a rendition of Jesus's face, and
since he is one of the good guys I figured he
wouldn't mind. Plus it sort of gives even more
protection. Nice!


That's all for today, tomorrow we have our last
schoolday for the year, i will be busy making
sketches of the chainsaw-man next week but
maybe something printed will come out as well.

Have a nice one!
Ea