Euro Fail - Relief Printing

As part of my research into the Euro I visited both the European Central Bank and the European Commission websites.   They were both cringingly awkward and cheesy in the same way as those awful Euro pop songs.   Take this little gem from the EC website:-

Inspiration for the € symbol itself came from the Greek epsilon (Є) – a reference to the cradle of European civilisation – and the first letter of the word Europe, crossed by two parallel lines to ‘certify’ the stability of the euro.

Source:  http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/euro/cash/symbol/index_en.htm

Seems inappropriate that it's the Euro that will do for Greece after borrowing their history and culture in the first place for their poxy symbol.  The sentance about the two parallel lines certifying the 'stability' of the Euro cracks me up - obviously those two parallel lines just weren't up to the job.

On the ECB website you can play games such as trying to guess which country the Euro coin is from.  Hopefully in another six months there might be far fewer countries to choose from.

There are some truly horrendous videos about the Euro as well - even the titles give you a clue and sound horribly hollow in the light of recent events:-

You can count on the euro

The euro is a solid foundation for investment and growth.

Rocking the world stage

The world's biggest currencies - the dollar and the euro - play together on the global stage. The euro gives Europe and Europeans a stronger voice in the world.

Here are the links for the videos - they're also available on Youtube.  When you watch either of these, you can see why the Euro was doomed from the start.

http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/video/cartoon_en.htm

It was a relief to get to the relief printing.  There are fewer things I like more than spending several hours cutting out a woodblock - seriously.  The image I chose was from a sketchbook page scanned into Photoshop and altered.

This was the page and whilst messing in Photoshop I got fed up of the whole process and scribbled across the image.  The Euros stayed visible but caught in the tangle of lines and I liked the spikiness and movement of the image so decided to use this for my woodblock.

I cut the block and used the reduction method to print the image in the flag colours of Greece, Ireland and Germany.

Of course, the German colours look best ...

I'm unable to decide if the Euro symbol is overcoming the scribbles or vice versa - a bit like the present economic situation.  Will we do for the Euro or will the Euro do for us?