Well, after shitloads of money, and no small amount of trepidation, my Epson 4800 is up and running. The missing cartridge doesn't appear to have caused any cock ups with the ink delivery tubes, so I guess I'm in business. The first thing I printed was a very detailed and colorful illustration by Marymouse of a mama 'roo and her adorable joey out for a hike in the forest. The first go printed well, but there was some subtle banding, so I ran a printhead check- I saw numerous clogged nozzles in the test pattern, but much to my amazement, the printer paused printing and scanned the resulting blocks, automatically identified the bad nozzles, and performed the self cleaning on the individual elements! It did this act several times, and after it was satisfied with its own output, it printed a short report on the printer's history: This thing has only ever had ONE new set of cartridges installed in its ENTIRE LIFE!!! The linear feet of paper passed through is only 750 feet! This thing is essentially brand new!

So, after I find a reasonably smooth watercolor paper to pound through this thing, I'm going to start switching over to watercolored illustrations for pretty much all my work.

Thanks once again for all who ordered commissions from me to help me get this thing off the ground- and for those who are waiting patiently, rest assured the work is well on its way!

Now, all I need to do is get my broken Epson 10000 scanner working! :p