Thursday, March 1, 2012

Getting down to duck-ness

Okay, okay... I guess it's time to prove that I've been working away on a new reduction linocut. More waterfowl? Hmmm. I seem to be in a watery rut at the moment.

As a reminder, here was the first pass. Two colors, ink applied through a stencil to keep the color where I wanted it.

Yellow and yellow ochre

I carved a bit and then used the same stencil to apply the next two colors. You already know what species these are, doncha?

Light green, darker yellow ochre

A little more carving and then... you guessed it... I used the same stencil to apply the next three colors. I did, however, remove a tiny bit more of the stencil material (mylar) to accommodate the female duck's foot.

Another green, another pass of yellow ochre, and orange

By golly, there are already seven colors on this image! Time to get a little action started on the background. I put the stencil aside and after a bit more carving I applied a transparent gray over the entire block.

Transparent gray

Again a little bit of carving and back to the use of the stencil to apply two more browns. (Colors 9 and 10, if you can believe it.) The most exciting thing to me about this pass was that the transparent brown ink almost completely resolved the male's head without having to print a third green.

One darker brown each for the male and female.

Pretty good start, I think. I've moved on four more passes from here, but you don't really want me to show everything at once, do you? As you've no doubt surmised (being the clever readers you are), the overall image is wider than I've been showing with these shots of the bird detail. So far the birds have been where all the action is, but that will change shortly! Stay tuned.

6 comments:

  1. It is so cool to watch the process! It reminds me of ?? years ago when I would spend time watching you and some others in the art building! Still amazed at the variety of gifts given to different people.

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  2. Your process is amazing! So many layers of color. Your work is gorgeous!

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  3. It's so exciting to watch your process! So may layers of colour! And what a beautiful image. Can't wait to see how it continues!

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  4. love the view of the female duck's back :D

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  5. Sherrie, I love each color as it is revealed. This whole print feels like a wonderful mystery and I can't wait to turn the page to see what happens next.

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  6. Michael... don't even THINK about how long ago that was...

    Process? Geez... can I tell what a bunch of printmaking geeks you all are, or what? ;-) Yeah, it's the process that's the fun part. (Extra fun when it all works out in the end, of course!)

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