"Usurper" in the house...

I considered breaking this up into three posts... both to create a prolonged dramatic ending and, honestly, to have a few posts in the queue to carry me through the distracting end-of-year chaos ahead. But the Problem Child print is STILL a problem... STILL not dry enough for the last ink layer... so there are enough delays around here already. Let's finish this little piece, shall we?

I shouldn't have worried that the previous pass was too dark, as this dark green went down on top of it and still left room for more.

Which I obligingly added. I could have stopped at this point, but you know me. "Just one more color" is the usual mantra around here. I finished this linocut with a dark brown... although I think it looks black in the photo.

"Usurper," reduction linocut, 7 x 5 inches. Edition TBD.

Along my "usual" walking route are several nest boxes intended for use by mountain bluebirds. Early each spring I see bluebirds popping in and out of almost all of them, but a few weeks later the tree swallows arrive and displace a few pairs.

I mutter "usurpers" at the assertive tree swallows and chastise the bluebirds for not holding their ground, but secretly I admire the spunk of swallows. From the moment the last one departs in the autumn I am waiting, waiting, waiting for their return.