Friday, November 18, 2016

Linocut in Progress: The owl emerges

As I mentioned in the first post about this current linocut, I waited until I felt semi-confident the piece would work before I started posting about it. And guess what? The next two stages were the point at which I decided it was safe to go public.

Steps 5 and 6 were mostly about carving. And carving. And carving. There are lots of details in the tree trunk and the feathers of the bird, I'd say 4 or 5 Star Trek (TNG) episodes worth of carving for each step.

"Night Watch," (Changing my mind about the title)
Reduction linocut, Step 5

Here you can see some of the trunk detail start to emerge, as well as some of the feather details in the bird, mostly around the face. Apparently I didn't take a photo of the ink rollup for either of these steps, but 5 was a transparent brown, and 6 was a transparent blue-black.

Reduction linocut, Step 6

The biggest surprise at this point? I think I might finish this in just 10 passes. That hasn't happened in ages! The advantage of trying to imagine a low light situation is that it's keeping me from going overboard with color subtleties. There will be some dark greens in the leaves, another dark in the tree and bird... and of course those yellow eyes need to be addressed. I didn't do them earlier in the process because getting the tone right will be a function of all the color around them.

But optimism has arrived. The next few days will tell me if it's justified. ;-)

1 comment:

  1. the owl seems to glow :D looking great (and only 10 passes, wont to bet on it? ;) )

    ReplyDelete

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...