Thursday, September 1, 2016

Linocut in Progress: Race to the finish, and the winner is....

Me? Maybe.

After a couple of days of headaches I made two important decisions. The first was to let everything sit an extra day (for mental health as well as drying reasons), and the second (after the wait) was to not do any more stripping and see what happened.

The next color was a straight-up green. Pthalo green mixed with yellow ochre. No transparent base, no white, no modifiers. Just ink. (From the stash of no-longer-manufactured Daniel Smith inks.)

Snow scene reduction linocut, Step 12

Yeah. Perfect roll out, perfect coverage, nice and thin, no problems. Have I mentioned how annoyed I am with Daniel Smith for discontinuing their ink?

Now a second green made by adding burnt sienna and more yellow ochre to the previous green.

Snow scene reduction linocut, Step 13

Okay, good! Some of the variations in the blues seen to be washing out a bit visually, but not much to be done about that. The subtleties are still important. (Plus digital camera struggles with blues.)

Next, adding more sienna to make a rich olive brown. On the paper it looks mostly brown, but okay.

Snow scene reduction linocut, Step 14

Nearly there now. One more color to go, and a fine example of why it's called reduction printing. Take a look at the block:

Final stage of reduction block

Just a few more darkest darks and then, Whew! It's done. The darkest bits are so small here that in the photo you can't really tell they're there. But... trust me.


Finished in time for today's deadline. Of course you can guess what happened last night. That deadline? It was postponed another two weeks.

Guess I have time to get another one started! With no white ink. None. Nope. Uh uh. Not. One. Drop. At least I hope not!

14 comments:

  1. It is wonderful. And, I, too, have been so annoyed with DS for well over a year. Sigh...

    Phyl Jones

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    1. Thanks, Phyl, both for your kind words and your ink-lamenting camaraderie.

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    2. Still grumbling...what really gets me is I remember DS as the "to go" company for quality printing inks back in the 1960's--even when their only ink was black--and now for them to say they are returning to their "roots!!" Good grief. Yep, still grumbling. On the other hand, I do like how you resolved this print. Thank you for sharing so much detail and photos; it really is appreciated. Phyl

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    3. Thanks. :-) I hope someone at DS is monitoring all the online mentions of how annoyed people are. I bet if you did a Google search of "Daniel Smith ink" and "angry printmakers" you'd get a lot of hits. ;-)

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  2. Lovely work,Sherrie. Don't know how you are able to keep subtracting mass AND add colors.

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    1. PG, methinks there's something deep in that statement. ;-) I have to work on it.

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  3. of course the deadline was postponed, but that means you have time for a different print :)

    adding the greens really gives this a great sense of depth :)

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    1. Of course! If I don't stick to a plan, why should I expect anyone else to? ;-)

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  4. Not unlike something that hangs on my wall!

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  5. Beautiful. :-]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
    Looking forward to "What's Next"??
    ;-]]]]

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  6. I love seeing the process and the awesome final print!

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    Replies
    1. :-) Thanks, Dawn! Hope your school year got off to a good start!

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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...