Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Calling it done...

For entirely too many weeks now I've been frustrated by unfinished projects, mostly contract illustration and writing jobs that have all bogged down simultaneously. So even though I had a new linoleum block drawn up and paper trimmed down and ready to go today, I just couldn't bring myself to start a new print. I had to finish this one first.

The previous ink layers were still a little tackier than I wanted, but I decided to dive in anyway.

As a reminder, the linocut was at this stage:


The diffuse band of darker pigment was working nicely, but I still wanted a bit more.

I (almost) always save the remains of the inks I mix at each stage of a print. Very often those scraps become the basis of subsequent color passes, and that was the case here. Monday's transparent gray went back on the inking table today, with a little more black and blue pigment added for this final pass.


Unfortunately this isn't a great shot– there's glare across the right-hand image– but you can see the blue-black in the lower right corner defining a few more twigs and adding more depth.

I thought that would be it, but I wasn't quite satisfied with the shape of that dark.

I decided I wanted the entire corner to push back more, not just the swatch below the largest leaves. So I inked the corner again and printed the final dark clear to the edge of the block on the right side.


This futzing and tweaking could go on forever, but I think I'm going to call this one done at last. Now all it needs is a title. Ummmm.....

7 comments:

  1. Yes! Excellent. You went just far enough. Great print!

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  2. That last pass really makes the print--cool! You could call it Fall Futzing, or Twig Tweaks, or.... (Sorry, my Norwegian punnyness got away from me there for a moment!)

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  3. great print :)

    (are you sure you are done with it? ;) )

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  4. It's a wise person who knows when to stop! Looks beaut.

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  5. Sometimes the hardest part of art is knowing when to stop.

    Good call. It's a nice one.

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  6. Very impressive - the temptation to add (or take away) is always that annoying little voice in your head - telling it to shut up is a triumphant feeling.

    Great print!

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  7. just right-made all the difference. If you do any more, the little old lady with the hammer might show up to stop you!

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Linocut in Progress: The Third Act

Time to wrap up this linocut ! And we are wrapping at warp speed (see what I did there?)... because there are deadlines. Exhibition deadline...