Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Linocut in Progress: Recovery effort underway!

Alrighty then. Time to try to sort out a solution to my too-dark-too-soon problem with the linocut in progress.

Inking mask cut from acetate.
I wanted to try spot-inking a lighter color in the area of this wildflower's bloom, so the first order of business was to cut a mask. In this case I'm using matte mylar because 1) the clear mylar I usually use has gone on walkabout (read: I don't seem to have put it away where it belongs and I can't find it) and 2) the thinner sheet of acetate that I tried to use as the mask tore the first time I rolled ink across it. Oops.

Ink rolled over the mask.
Here, of course, is the mask with the ink rolled up. The ink is a peachy color with lots of white... opaque enough to cover the darker orange already on the print and to provide a lighter base for subsequent colors.

Ink up with mask removed. Oops. Messy.
Here is the block inked up and mask removed. There's a sort of "ghosty" bit of ink all around the shape, which is from the first failed attempt with the mask that tore. I wiped off the block, but not quite well enough. After I pulled a test print I cleaned the block more thoroughly and started again.

Paintbrush linocut: Step 5
And here's the result. The "ghosty" bits don't bother me much because more color will be going into the background. The overall shape isn't particularly crisp, but that's not a problem, either, because subsequent colors will be applied from carved shapes on the block, not shapes printed through a mask. (Does that make sense?)

Seems like I should be able to go forward from here... as soon as I figure out what the next step will be!

3 comments:

  1. see, knew you would figure out what to do :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, we'll see once the next color goes on. It all feels very my like I'm stumbling around in the dark... but it's better to be stumbling around than sitting around waiting for something to happen all by itself!

    ReplyDelete

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