Linocut in Progress: That missing blue, and the trouble that came with it.

Part of why I decided to tackle the current linocut in progress was that it gave me an opportunity to work with a different and unexpected color palette. Spoiler alert: This image is mostly ochres and browns. 

But one of the most important elements of the image IS the blue one might expect from reflections on a bird on water. However, I've already got significant amounts of yellow ochre on the paper. I considered doing the blue patch immediately after the lightest yellow... from a get-the-color-right-and-give-it-some-luminosity standpoint it would have been the correct decision. But even when I cut a mask to try to contain the very distinct shapes, this blue is going to affect everything that goes on top of it. By cutting away and printing a second yellow before this step, I narrowed down the size of that affect.

It's hard to explain... so let me show you how it went. 

First... I cut a mask.

Or, more precisely, I cut a stack of masks. In a perfect world I would have made even smaller, more precise shapes... but it's just too difficult (read: impossible) to hand cut more than a dozen identical masks out of newsprint. Maybe if I had some sort of machine to cut them. But, no. I have me, and I have an Xacto knife.

Masks cut, it was time to mix the blue. It needs to be fairly opaque to cover the ochre that's already here, but I don't want to add so much white it looks chalky. Careful. Careful.

Step 4 rollup

You can see several color attempts at the upper edge of my work surface here. I knew the yellow underneath would darken this blue, so I made it as light as I dared without going chalky. Here it is masked on the press.

And printed.

Step 4 printed

Meh. I didn't love it. It looks quite dark, and a little bit gray... which was expected. I decided to go ahead and put this color on all the prints anyway, and resigned myself to a second blue run over the top of this one that would hopefully push things the direction I wanted.

I tried this:

Test blue for Step 5

Which brightened the blue but made it too dark. I am pretty sure I went ahead and printed this on all the prints, although I don't seem to have taken a photo. It's too dark, but it's very transparent and it will add some more "influencing" color to the blue that ultimately goes on top.

Because of course I mixed and tested a couple more blues and eventually settled on this. More white added than I wanted. Chalkier color. But not much else to be done. I had already sent a couple of prints to the reject "tester" pile.

Step 6 ink rollup

 I think you can see that I took advantage of having a sub-optimal blue already on the prints by carving a few little areas that would allow the "wrong" blue to still be present. Why not? A little more color variety never hurt anything.

Same mask shape applied:

Step 6 mask

And the resulting prints:

Step 6 printed

It wasn't perfect, but it was time to move on. There were several more darker layers to go around these blue shapes, so I just hoped additional darker values would visually brighten things up. 

Whew. That was a lot of work to get a little color on less than a third of the entire image. Let's hope the rest of this is a little more straightforward! 

(Spoiler alert #2: It wasn't. Not particularly, anyway.)

Linocut in Progress: New year, new image

 Okay... I realize we are already halfway through February, but I've studiously avoided too much social media since the beginning of the year, which somehow has included not posting work in progress.

And, full disclosure: This image gave me some headaches early on, so not posting took away at least a little of the "performance anxiety" that gets added when I'm publishing progress in real time. 

Enough excuses! Let's start a linocut!

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 1 spot ink rollup

I don't think I've had an image start quite this boring in a long time... but here we go. No surprises here– the subject matter is a bird on the water. But it's a bird with a white belly, and I wanted a slight value shift in the reflection of that belly. Just a skosh of light gray needs to be here, so I did some spot inking and cut the first of what would end up being several newsprint masks.

Step 1 mask

Step 1 printed

Honestly, it hardly seems worth the effort, since most of this little patch of gray will still be covered by other colors, but there are few things worse than getting all the way to the end of a process and realizing if you'd only done one small thing FIRST, the end result would be better. *

(* Okay, there are a LOT of things worse than this. But when it happens, the disappointment is real!)

On to Step 2! A very straight-up color roll. But... whhaaaaaaaaaaat? What is with all this yellow? Where is Sherrie Standard Step 2 Blue?

Step 2 rollup

Step 2 printed

Yep, that's yellow. (Well, a pale yellow ochre, but you know what I mean.) And just wait. It's going to get worse. 

But as an aside– Come on, birders. I bet you already know what species this is.

Remember how I said three sentences ago that the yellow was going to get worse? Not kidding. No photo of the ink rollup, but it's pretty obvious what happened here.

Step 3 printed

At this point I was already questioning the wisdom of getting this much ochre on the page this early. Let's call that foreshadowing, and leave the headache that resulted from this decision for my next post, shall we?

Linocut in Progress: Finishing up the dipper

 It can't be avoided anymore. It's time to address the details of this bird. 

As many have figured out from the bird's silhouette and its habitat, the subject of the current linocut in progress is the American Dipper. The dipper is a unique and delightful little thing–– a songbird that swims and walks along underwater to glean aquatic insects from rocks. But it's also... gray. 

Just. Gray. 

Okay... the head of the adult is a brownish gray, as you'll see. But in general it's just gray. For the entire process up until now I've been worrying about whether or not a little gray bird will get lost in the chaos of this background. Can I make a subtle bird the focus of a chaotic environment without making it look like it's cut out and pasted onto the background? 

And what the heck was I thinking?

Naught to do but carry on, I guess. First let's do something to give the bird some form. Because here I am, working in a graphic media, using flat, hard-edged shapes to give objects subtle form. (Insert eyeroll emoji here.)

Reduction linocut in progress - Step 12 rollup

For Step 12 I rolled up a light-to-dark gray blend, just for the body of the bird.

Step 12 printed

Of course the top edge when printed isn't nearly as light as it looked on the block, because there was already color underneath and my new ink layer was semi-transparent. But this is fine. I think.

 I hemmed and hawed about how fussy to be about the brown head. Should I cut a mask? In the end I decided to just roll the ink on and wipe extraneous bits with a rag before printing and call it good enough.

Step 13 rollup

Step 13 printed

Yes, these photos are pretty awful...such inconsistent color! I've been working at night or on cloudy/rainy days a lot recently, so photography has been a bit rough. I promise you'll see something good at the end!

Now where were we? Oh, right! Enough fiddlefaddling around with "big" shapes, it's time to get on with some details. 

Step 14! (Will this thing never end?)

At least I'm only working in a very small section of the block now. You can probably see that I didn't bother to take the last of the background material off the block at this stage. I have a theory that a little more material to support the paper when it goes through the press can make it less apt to slip and smear. I don't know if that's true. It might just be an excuse to not have to carve all that material away.

Step 15 was more of the same transparent gray after a bit of carving, and apparently I didn't take a photo in between... so here are both rollups together:

Step 14 rollup

Step 15 rollup

After Steps 14 and 15

I was feeling pretty good about the bird at this stage. In a less chaotic background I might have been tempted to leave it at this stage... nice and subtle as a dipper should be. But I can't have it getting lost, so I have to push for just a wee bit more contrast.

Unfortunately at this stage the ink was all very wet. I tried to press on (see what I did there?), SO anxious to finish, knowing how close I was. But I got a bad case of wet rejection... a situation in which the new ink not only won't adhere to the already-printed-but-still-wet ink, but it will also pull the wet ink off the paper. I had to give it up and go to bed. 

So now.... Step 16! Holy cow. Will this be the end at last?

Step 16 rollup

Step 16 printed

(Sigh) Nope. In any other situation this would probably be great. I am really happy with how this bird looks. But it needs one more teeny-tiny bit of oomph to bring it over the line. 

Step 17 rollup

Really. A teeny-tiny bit. Could this be the most ridiculous color pass ever? Nah. I've actually had smaller ones. 

But it was worth it.

Tentative title: "A Dip at Dawn" or "A Breakfast Dip" or.......
Reduction linocut, 12" x 12"
Edition of 22
@Sherrie York

Linocut in Progress: Where were we?

There have been a few distractions and deadlines taking me out of the studio lately. In fact, I've just returned from a couple of days away in New Hampshire and Massachusetts... in part to attend the opening of the Rockport Art Association & Museum National exhibition. It's my first time applying to this show, and I was delighted to have a piece selected. Good friends and colleagues James Coe and Cindy House also have (award winning!) work in the show, so going to the opening gala was an opportunity to both check out a new (to me) venue and to see my peeps. 

But I'm home again and back to work, trying to wrap up the current linocut in progress. I'm further along now than this post will show, but not quite finished. IRL (In Real Life) I am at the Hard to Remain Patient stage. I have only the details of the bird to print, but the layers that have already been printed are still a bit too wet to add another. I tried to print today... but made a mess with wet rejection and had to just stop and clean up for the day. 

SO let's back up to what was happening before I left for the NH/MA adventure. 

Apparently there were some gremlins that got into the studio and destroyed some documentation while I was away... because the next photo in my camera looked all kinds of different, but I didn't have any shots of either the inked block or my rollups. It appears that I might have printed both a darker blue across the entire block and then a gray along just the bottom 1/4 of the image. Or maybe someone else did it when I wasn't looking.  But here's the next progress shot that I have, so we will pretend it was Step 7 and move on.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 7 (?) printed

I seem to have gotten back on track again after this, since I have a nice gray rollup to show you...

Step 8 rollup

You might notice that the bird doesn't have any ink on it. Because most of the material around the bird has now been carved away it wasn't too difficult to roll ink around it and I didn't need to mask it. If I accidentally got ink on the bird it was easy enough to wipe it with a rag before printing.

And now we are here:

Step 8 - printed

The color is looking quite rough here, but don't panic. Let's roll up Step 9.

Things started to get super tweaky at this stage. You can see that most of the material has been carved off the block now... certainly most of the water is gone. 

But everything was feeling too blue and gray and I wanted to warm up a few reflections. I also wanted to lighten that foreground stone a little bit.

I mixed a crazy-bright-looking pumpkin color and spot inked the reflections in question. I also hit the top of the rock with a transparent white. 

Masking the bird might not have been entirely necessary here, but I didn't want to risk the escape of any of that pumpkin-colored drama. I had some bird-shaped masks left over from previous stages so it was easy to just pop them in place. 

And here's the result:

Step 9 - printed

The overall color looks slightly less alarming here, but this thing is turning out to be a challenge to photograph. 

Let's take a look at one more color pass before we take a break.... perhaps the last one before we turn our attention to the bird. (Speaking of which... have you identified it yet? Eastern US peeps might struggle with it, but westerners should be able to sort it even in silhouette.) 

So here's the Step 10 rollup:

Step 10 - rollup

Yes, it's a nice dark swirling its way down the remaining bits of lino surface. Once again I just wiped stray ink out of the bird shape rather than use a mask.

Step 10 printed

I really hoped to be done with all the water and rocks at this stage, but felt like it needed just a wee bit more oomph. I did a bit more carving and then hit the whole thing again with the same dark ink.

Step 11 printed

Yes, okay... even the camera thinks it feels a bit more balanced now and is taking slightly better photos. I think it's time to turn our attention to that bird and see if we can't wrap this thing up! Stay tuned.

Linocut in Progress: Out of the blue.... and back again!

 Okay, then! Progress is happening, but this week it feels a little bit like that "one step forward, two steps back" sort of situation. But not really. Well, maybe. You can decide.

I decided that it was time to warm up/gray down the overall tone of the piece for Step 5, so a did a bunch of carving and rolled up a rather peculiar blended ink combo of gray to a sort of brown(ish).

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 5 rollup

I felt okay about the result.... at first.

Step 5 - printed

Yes, I want that warmer bit in the lower left of the image, and yes, I wanted to introduce some grayer blue. But after I sat with this for a while (and took up some more carving), I realized that it was a little too much brown too soon. Time to drag it back into the blue realm.

Step 6 - rollup

And yeah... that seems REALLY blue. But I have to remind you (and perhaps myself) that digital cameras don't play well with blues. They especially tend to make everything too contrasty! I struggled so much to take a photo of the print at this stage that I broke down and made a quick scan of it. Well, sort of quick. The piece is too large for my scanner, so I scanned it in pieces and stitched it together. But the ink was still a bit tacky, so I didn't go too crazy about getting it settled snug on the scanner bed. This is better than the camera view, but not perfect. 

Oh, wait! First I have to point out the cute little bird-shaped mask on the inked block. Because this is NOT a bluebird or even a blue bird. 

Step 6 printed

As I said... not a great scan, but better than a phone photo in terms of color and value. (That bright blue in the upper right is from light glare, and the dark blue vertical line in the left third is because of where I pieced the scans together.) 

So, yeah. I think it's going okay. A good amount of material needs to come out around the bird now, and then I can start working into the warmer, darker colors. I've been avoiding detail on the bird.... I'm a little afraid of it... but the reckoning will come soon. A few people who have seen the piece at this stage have identified the species already. Can you?

Linocut in Progress: The plot thickens. Or something.

It's been a rough week here, and I've been coping the only way I know how: Stress eating. (Bad.) And spending time in the studio. (Good.) And listening to a lot of Poirot audiobooks read by David Suchet while I work. Because he's the best. (Also good.)

Mint chocolate chip milkshakes aside (because for some reason I only crave ice cream when the weather gets cold), there are plenty of challenges to sort out with the current linocut in progress. I've picked a subject matter that is familiar (yes, of course there's water and a bird in it), but both the bird species and the expression of the water are new to me. Luckily I'm not worrying too much about the bird just yet. But oh, this water! It's giving me palpitations.

Step 3 wasn't too bad. Not a lot of carving, and a basic blue to print. No biggie.

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 3 rollup

See? It did create an interesting (and not unexpected) additional color where it overlapped some of the previously masked areas. Not much to help identify what's going on yet, though.

Step 3, printed

But now the complex carving part begins. The water here is pooling and overlapping in all sorts of directions, creating some fun patterns, but making it a challenge to decide what to carve and how to simplify. (Simplify, she says! Ha.)

Step 4, carving

Unfortunately there's no photo of the Step 4 rollup.... it was a medium gray-blue that took a few tries to mix, and I'm still not sure I got it right. But here's the result of the print pass:

Step 4, printed

See what I mean? That's some complicated water going on, that is. But, hey! You can see our avian hero now. Sort of.  A shadow of its self-to-be. 

For now it's back to more complex carving. Wish me luck... 

Linocut in Progress: Oh, look. It starts with blue. Again.

 If I had a nickel for every time I started a new linocut with a light blue, I'd have.... a lot of nickels. So let's drop another one in the jar and see what's up this time, shall we?

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 1 ink roll-up

That's a weird collection of scribbly carved lines, isn't it? I might be embarking on another one of those "it seemed like a good idea at the time" images, but here we go. 

Step 1 printed

Not much to see here, although readers/followers who know me well will probably have a good guess about the subject matter already.

But let's throw a wrench in that right away. I need to add some bits of warmer color in here, and I want to do it before too much more blue goes down. (There will be a LOT of blue in this image.) I can't possibly hope to contain it in the miniscule areas I have in mind, but I can at least keep this warm color from running completely amok by using a mask.

Creating some masks: trace and trace again

It's been a while since I've explained masking, so let's walk through it now. It's a multi-step process that begins with a sheet of clear acetate. I place the acetate over my lino block and trace the shapes in which I want to contain this warm color. I have been known to cut extremely fussy masks in the past, but I don't have the patience for that at the moment.

After I make the acetate pattern, I trace those shapes onto plain newsprint. 

Cutting the masks

By keeping the shapes fairly simple I am able to cut through several sheets of newsprint at a time without things sliding around too much. This saves time and patience. Which I think I have already mentioned I am a bit lacking in at the moment.

Masks cut, I can turn my attention to rolling up some ink again. Here's a warm light rust color. 

Step 2 rollup

You can see that I didn't roll the color across the entire block. No need, since the color is only going to print through the masked areas, anyway.

Here's the mask in place on the inked block:

Mask in place, ready to print

Important caveat here! You will notice that my newsprint sheet is not as large as the entire print block. This is good from a saving paper point of view, HOWEVER. It only works to use a short sheet when the already-printed ink color(s) are dry. If the previously-printed ink is at all damp, the newsprint will strip some of it off the prints. This can be a good thing in some instances, and a bad thing in others. In this case, if my already-printed blue was still damp I would end up with a harsh line 2/3 of the way down the print, with lighter blue on top and darker on the bottom. Not what I want! But the blue was quite dry already, so no problem.

Step 2 printed

Weird-looking, huh? I am either very clever or I've already made a mess. Only time (and a few more ink layers) will tell.

Opening this weekend! SAGA 89th Annual Members Exhibition

In the Shallows
reduction linocut © Sherrie York
12" x 12" - Edition of 20

If you are in New York City this weekend, why not head out to the beautiful galleries at Governors Island for the Society of American Graphic Artists' 89th Annual Members Exhibition, featuring over 150 hand pulled prints by brilliant SAGA printmakers from across the country. (Including In the Shallows, by... me!)

The opening reception will be held on Saturday, October 26, 3 - 5 pm at The Arts Center at Governors Island, next to the ferry landing. The Trust for Governors Island operates year-round ferry service to Governors Island.

Ferries will also run from Brooklyn, this weekend only. There may be delays and more visitors riding the ferry due to the annual harvest festival on October 26 and 27; please plan your visit accordingly.

SAGA's exhibition is free and open to the public from October 22 to November 3, Thursday to Sunday from 9 am to 6 pm or by appointment.

Linocut in Progress: Wait. Did I really finish in fewer than 10 steps?

Carrying on with the snowy linocut in progress. I do feel like I'm tempting fate just a tiny bit by imagining fresh snowfall, but here in Maine we should still be several weeks away from such things. (Although it rained here all day yesterday and I broke down and lit the wood stove for the first time this season, just to clear the chilly damp.)

After the greens-on-top-blue-across-the-bottom of Step 4, I cleared all the remaining material from the lower two thirds of the block. So satisfying to do so... and of course it means I'm now working with only a very small portion of the block. It should all go fairly quickly now...

So let's roll up a sort of middle-value green and print Step 5.

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 5 rollup

Step 5 printed

Okay! Feeling pretty good about that, although it's really too much green. I think we can remove everything from the block now that should remain green and concentrate on the trunks and branches.  The ink rollup for Step 6 was a gray brown.

Step 6 printed

Ugh. This is a terrible photo... so sorry! Apparently it's the only one I took at this stage, and I was working at night. I tried to adjust the photo a bit but only made it worse, so you'll have to use your imagination. The brown didn't read completely brown, but it wasn't this green. (And the snow was not purple.)

I was feeling good about the suggestion of a sunny gap in the upper right of the image, but wanted to emphasize that by bringing some of the tree trunks visually forward while also keeping them in shadow. First, however, I thought I should lighten the nearest ones just a smidge, so they could show more detail when the darks were added.

Step 7 rollup

Step 7 printed

Yes, okay... this photo has a bit too much contrast, but it's better than the previous one! You can see that the lightened trunks aren't really light. But they are light-er, which will hopefully allow for some more details in those closest trees, to help them feel even closer to us.

Step 8 rollup

Back to a darker brown to bring out some details and move the cluster of trees forward.

Step 8 printed

Another nighttime photo... Too contrasty, and now radically skewed because I was trying to avoid shadows from the overhead light. I have mentioned I'm not a photographer, right? 

However.... we are super close to finished here. I think a small cluster of the closest trees needs to get hit with one more dark, and maybe that will be it. Really? In fewer than ten passes? Are we sure this is my work?

Step 9 rollup

Only those two right-most trees received ink here. (The middle brownish-looking ones are just stained from previous color passes.) 

And, voila! All done. (And this one is a proper scan with good contrast and no skew!)

"Stillness," reduction linocut, edition of 18, 10" x 8"
©Sherrie York

This new linocut and more than two dozen other pieces are headed west for the opening of my solo exhibition at Blue Sage Center for the Arts in Paonia, Colorado. Show opens October 25 and runs through December 19. Do check it out of you're in the neighborhood!