Fieldwork Friday: Flashback

In 2025 I was delighted to be awarded a place in the Maine Master Naturalist Program student cohort. It's not an easy gig to get; the course is only taught in one or two locations in the state each year, and those locations change. One of the two 2025 courses was given in Falmouth, about 90ish minutes away and the closest the program ever gets to me.

The MMNP involves 10 months of intense study, with a new topic (or two or three) introduced every class meeting. Insects, wildflowers, winter tree ID, birds, skulls, tracks, reptiles, geology... It was a LOT. But learning is fun, and learning alongside other nature geeks even moreso. AAAAAAND  learning alongside other nature geeks while also being obliged to keep a nature journal is the best kind of fun there is. 

Each month we had homework related to the current topics, and a lot of it was recorded in our journals. We also had ongoing projects: a study site that we visited at least one hour each month, ditto an "adopted" tree. 

The program was coming to an end at this time last year... but I was tickled to pick up my journal and find entries from a year ago this week. These two pages are also a good representation of the variety of observations we recorded each month. 

Click to embiggen!

Study Site: Nash Pond sits in the mainland portion of Audubon's Todd Wildlife Sanctuary in Bremen, Maine. The 30-acre property was once a farm, with Nash Pond serving as irrigation holding. I chose it as my study site partly because I knew I'd be there often throughout the year (the dock at the bottom of the hill is the crossing point to Hog Island and the Audubon camp, where I coordinate some programs), and partly because it's a beautiful spot. And I wanted frogs and turtles in my study area! I ended up with a lot of tadpole drama... a big hatch, then loss of water, and then an invasion by hungry young turtles!

Study Tree: This Black Cherry is a cluster of young-ish trees in my yard, leaning to one side because of encroachment by branches of a maple. This poor tree suffered a lot during the year... bugs and fungus and getting crushed by falling limbs from the aforementioned maple. It seemed to fare a little better this year, but I admit I didn't keep close tabs in the way I did last year.

New Topic: Fungi! One of our September assignments was to find, identify, and record a certain number of fungi species. We'd had a dry summer, so this was a bit challenging, but eventually I found everything I needed.

In the future I'll share some more current pages with you, and maybe a few more flashbacks as the season warrants. I doubt that every Friday will be a Fieldwork Friday, but I'm sure they will pop up from time to time. 

Linocut in Progress: Theatrical Cut

Director's Cut: The movie the way the Director actually wanted it, but the studio said no.

Extended Cut: Really the thing I ALWAYS want. The Director's Cut, plus extra scenes, plus all the BTS (Behind the Scenes) documentaries. And sometimes even the commentaries. I love to hear and watch clever and creative people working together to make something wonderful.

Theatrical Cut: The thing we got instead.

You see where I'm going with this, right? You're about to get a Theatrical Cut, incomplete storylines and all. Sorry about that.

I have struggled to get any work done in the studio for the last 4 or 5 months, and when I did manage to carve lino or roll out ink, I didn't do a thorough job of documenting the process. Posting photos of work in progress felt like posting pictures of a meal or something... but less "Instagrammable." It's all been done before! BOR-ing. 

But here we are. I promised myself that Brush and Baren would see at least a little more action than it has for the last 8 months, and at the moment this is what I have. I'll do better in future.

Hey! That's ink on a block of lino! What's happening here?

But look! Here's some ink! On a block! Ready to print! 

Hm. Actually I think this rollup was for the second, or even third pass at this small image. This seems to be the first in-progress photo I took, though.

Reduction linocut in progress: Step... um... Three? Four?

I worked on this piece back in July, and my memory is fuzzy, but I think at this point there are three ink passes in place. A "peachy" one and two values of ochre. Hard to tell, but I think that's right. (Nope. See below.)

This is a small piece, just 5x7 inches. We had a stupidly hot and humid July this year, and I couldn't bear working on anything larger. But I wanted a couple of new, small things for the local gallery season and a 5x7 felt like something I could manage without disintegrating into a pile of sweaty goo. (TMI? Probably.)

Let's see... what do I have next? There isn't another photo of an ink rollup for the entire process... so we'll just have to do a little sleuthing and see what we can figure out from bad photos of the color stages.

Linocut in progress: Step four?

With a bit of squinting, and tossing about of mental files in the dim, dark recesses of my brain, I now think this might be the fifth color pass. I think the very first pass was a solid rectangle of pale rusty-peachy. No white in this image at all. 

1) Pale rusty-peachy rectangle

2) Mid-value rusty-peachy (These are technical color names, I'll have you know.)

3) Yellowy ochre

4) Ochrey ochre

5) Transparent gray which turned greenish when it covered the ochrey bits. As planned. 100%.

Linocut in progress: Now we're on six!

6) Another gray, a bit more opaque and a bit darker and a bit cooler. (Again, these are very specific and technical descriptions of color. Because I said so.)

Subject matter seems clear at this point, yes? Some rocks and some rock weed. A common view at low tide in Maine.

Linocut in progress: Step 7

7) A darker, bluer gray.

And then I am reminded of this old cartoon (frequently mis-attributed to Gary Larson of Far Side fame, but actually done by a guy named Sidney Harris):

8) and 9) Although in this case it's "be more explicit in steps 8 and 9." Because two more gray passes happened here... not one. 

Intertidal Tapestry, reduction linocut, 5" x 7", Edition of 25

And that's it! A little something for the Underfoot series, although I just noticed that I haven't actually made a page for it on my website yet. Better get that done!

But, hey! When was the last time you saw me get away with finishing a print in fewer than 10 passes? 

Wait. Has it really been almost 20 years? A "Brush and Baren" reboot

Contemplating past and future on the Pemaquid River, August 2026

Brush and Baren began on a whim at Winter Solstice 2006. In the beginning it was a mix of professional and personal reflections... a little of this, a little of that. I named it brush for the watercolor illustrations and sketchbook pages, and baren for the printmaking that I was still doing entirely by hand-rubbing with baren and spoon.

"Content," and my dedication to it, has waxed and waned, as life itself does over a 20-year period. I recently went back and read some early entries... nostalgia coming in waves. Small town mountain life. Travel here and there. Illustration projects. Earliest experiments in reduction printing... some successful, some quite cringeworthy through the lens of time. 

The blog community was vibrant in 2006. People read and responded–a growing number of them as time went on. I made some friends who I still haven't met in person but remain in contact with... although not as frequently as we all once were. 

And now it's September 2026, and I find to my chagrin that I haven't written a single blog post all year.

What the heck happened?

So. Much.

The "social" mediaverse (I think of it as antisocial media, honestly) has become a quagmire of soundbites and artificial creators. Faster, brighter, louder... meaner. Does anyone even read blogs anymore? 

Does it matter?

I didn't expect readers in the beginning, really. Mostly I was stumbling around learning to be an illustrator, an educator, an artist, a naturalist. I was cheered and grateful when some friends came along for the journey. 

But the journey has been a bit murky the last few years, and Brush and Baren seemed to lose its way, along with my focus.

I'm going to try to fix that. I'm not sure if that ultimately means moving to a new platform (Substack, anyone?), but for now I'll keep chattering into the blogosphere, and if anyone chats back, so much the better. You won't often see a baren in use these days... although a spoon does make an appearance for detail work from time to time. I'm not doing as much illustration at the moment, but I've been thinking about re-opening negotiations with brushes (we've always had a contentious relationship). Last year I managed to keep a naturalist journal going for 11 whole months, but never shared any of those pages here. Might be time to start that up again. We'll see. 

All I know is I'm anxious to create a kinder, gentler online community again. Come along, if you'd like. Who knows what we might discover?

Linocut in Progress: The final step... twice. No. Three times.

 Okay, let's wrap this thing up, shall we? How much more can there be? There's almost nothing left on this block! The background is done, the tree is done. (99% done) All that needs to be done is a slight darkening of the bird's head markings, and maybe a few tiny dark spot in the tree branch, just to tie it all together. 

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 14 rollup

At this point I made a proper scan so you can get a better idea of the actual color balance. We're finished, right?

Proper scan at Step 14, click to embiggen

Well, yes, that all looks nice and I'm satisfied (as much as I ever am) that this image reflects what I saw out my window. But what's missing for me is the why. Why is this little chickadee all fluffed up and snugged up next to the tree trunk!

Because it was raining, that's why! You can see a couple of drops on the underside of the foreground branch, but I wanted to suggest a more active rain situation. I had considered cutting away white lines for the rain at the very beginning of this process, but it seemed a risky idea, since I had no idea how many lines I wanted and whether white was really going to be the color they needed to be. 

I decided to complete the entire image sans rain, hoping that a decent image would emerge with or without that extra bit, and to use a second block as an experiment in overprinting. 

Thus began several days of headscratching and block carving and a bit of test printing. The flaws in my first idea became quickly apparent, so I abandoned block #2 and started over with block #3. After a few more tests I settled on these few lines and a medium-light gray ink.

Second block, Step 15

Final (?) stage, click to embiggen

I thought I was done at this stage... subtle, but a nice suggestion of rain a la Japanese printmakers. I made a scan, called the file FINAL. But after a few days I decided it needed one more bit of something.

More carving of these little lines happened, and then a layer of transparent white ink was rolled up.

Step 16 rollup

This was super tedious to print! Difficult to keep extraneous ink out of the background, so every inking required several minutes of wiping out around the lines. But I got there in the end.

Here's a scan of the FINAL final, embiggenable for a better view if you click on it.

"Rainy Days and Mondays," reduction linocut
Edition of 18 on BFK Rives, 6"x12"

Whew. Now it's time to figure out what's next!

Linocut in Progress: In Which We Start Fussing With the Little Things

After all that green it's time to start defining the tree and bird a bit more, and to start balancing the values. Let's warm things up a bit with a reddish-brown

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 10 rollup

It's a bit of a relief (pun intended) to get this color pass down and see that everything is holding together okay. Promising! But of course I saw a teeny thing that I didn't like... 

Step 10 printed

The top edge of the horizontal branch on which the bird is perched is too dark and harsh. It's a little thing... but it bothers me, so I will fix it with some spot inking. Nothing complicated, just a semi-transparent white rolled over that little section.

Step 11 rollup

Comparison below: Step 10 on the top, Step 11 on the bottom:

Step 10 vs 11, printed

There's not a lot of material left on the block at this stage... but somehow there are still several steps left to go. 

I think I can finally move away from the background and add some more details in the foreground tree. I don't seem to have a rollup photo for the next step, but I'm willing to bet you can tell it was a slightly darker brown layer. 

Step 12 printed

And now Step 13! Again, a dark brown, this one a bit cooler in temperature, to bring out the last (???) bits of detail in the tree. 

Step 13 rollup

Step 13 printed... 

Okay. We're getting close now. Maybe. I want to darken the details of the bird's head just a wee bit. But will that be the end? 

Spoiler alert: Nope.

Linocut in Progress: So Much Background!

Alright... back to the greens. Outside it's still gray. I need some cheer.

Step 7 rollup and mask

At this stage I needed to think more about not letting the green interfere with the bird and and the tree branch, so I cut some newsprint masks again. This print ended up being a festival of masking, and I realized it might have been easier to cut two different blocks from the get-go. Hindsight, and all that.

Step 7 printed

Again I worried that the green might be a bit bright... But there's that interesting phenomenon of colors appearing more saturated on gray, wet days... so I didn't want to lost that experience. Some of this green will be covered by other darks, so I crossed my fingers and pushed on.

Step 8 rollup

I wanted to tie things back together after the masking, a get a better sense of where I stood overall with values, so I mixed up a fairly transparent brown. The reddish tones would (I hoped) create darker, subtler greens while also warming up the tree and giving it some form. 

Step 8 printed

And can I just say how satisfying it is when an intention actually works out more or less as I envisioned? Whew.

Riding high on this satisfactory color pass, I decided to descend into pickiness and beef up some of the lichen color just a bit. Back to the fussy mask cutting. 

Step 9 and mask

TERRIBLE photo here... I actually took it as the print was hanging on the rack. But it did strengthen the color a bit, so on we go.

Step 9 (sideways photo hanging on rack)

Linocut in Progress: Getting away from gray

I dunno if it's just me, but it seems like we've had more than the usual number of gray days in the last month or two. As a child of the 300-days-of-sunshine-per-year interior West, these coastal winter days are hard for me. I don't mind some weather and atmosphere, but I really would prefer a different balance than the one we're currently in. 

Soooooooooooo.... Let's print some ridiculous green for Step 5 of the current reduction linocut in progress. 

Step 5 with mask

I jest (slightly), but it did take a few tries to hit the correct green for this stage. Initial attempts were waayyyyy too bright. Even after I settled on a color and printed the entire run, I wasn't sure it was quite right.

Step 5 printed

Yep. The next day I decided it was too much, too soon. Right color, wrong stage of the process. Nothing to do but overprint a semi-transparent white-to-gray blend and tone it all down.

Step 6 rollup

Step 6 printed

Yes, that's better... and I got the intermediate green in the bargain. It's always a bit of a head-scratcher when I have to think inside out about values. Before I overprinted I did, of course, carve away the areas where I wanted this green to remain, but I had to remind myself these were not the lightest bits of green.

Step 5 vs Step 6

Here's a comparison shot... I definitely think it's better this way, and worth the mental gymnastics. Next step? Another green, I think. Maybe. Probably.

Linocut in Progress: A quiet moment from home

 Alrighty, then. 

I know it's been ages since I posted anything here. Several reasons for that, but one of the biggest is that readership of blogs in this format has fallen way off and I'm uncertain what to do about it. Social media in general is such a minefield right now... especially with all of the horrors (for creators) of AI, and AI scraping of images. I'm about to go back to snail mail, honestly.

But until I decide what to do... there IS a narrative of a linocut in progress to share, although the path will be bumpy. I apparently didn't even think to take photos until I had already printed the second color pass. But even at this stage, I think North American readers will already be able to identify the subject. 

I was surprised one rainy day to look out my window and see a definitive answer to the question of what birds do when it's raining. I'm sure some seek cavities, and I've watched a few huddle from time to time under the roof of my wood shed... but on this day I found an obviously very damp chickadee huddled against the trunk of a tree.

The first big questions, before I even started, were whether or not I would suggest the actual rain and, if so, should it be represented by white or light gray lines? In the case of white or light gray lines they would need to be carved out NOW and held open for the duration of the process.

Hm. 

I looked at how Japanese printmakers handled rain... mostly with the thinnest of black or dark gray lines. 

Hm. 

Well. 

I decided not to decide, and to just plan to cut a completely separate block with which to print an overlay at the end. Would this come back and bite me in the butt? Maybe.

Reduction linocut in progress: Steps 1 and 2 printed

But here are the first two gray stages already printed, and we're moving on to Step 3. I wanted to warm up the tone a bit... this will be a balancing act that will challenge me the entire way through. Too warm? Too cool?

Step 3 rollup

Honestly, the rollup here looks rather pink... It's a problem I often struggle with when working with browns. Color temperature... what the heck.

Oh. And I suppose right off the bat I need to issue a disclaimer, apology, warning... about the quality of photography during this project. We've had a lot of gray days, and I've been working a lot in the evenings. All of which is to say that studio light is pretty awful right now, and attempts to use natural light through wintery windows is often compromised by dirty windows and weird shadows. I could wait until each stage is completely dry and then stick a print in the scanner... but who wants to wait for that? 

So we're stuck with substandard photography. Sorry.

Step 3 printed, accompanied by window dirt and shadows.

But hey... at least the brown doesn't look so pinkish on top of the gray. You knew that would happen, didn't you?

On to Step 4.

Step 4 rollup and mask

There are some lichen on the tree, which I'd like to suggest, so I mixed up a lichen-y blue green. I wanted to contain this color only in the foreground tree, so cut some newsprint masks and printed away. 

Step 4 printed

I thought this already seemed a bit dark, but I know from experience not to panic too much about value in these early stages, because once the actual dark bits start coming into play everything changes. So far, so good. Except for the photography. 

Linocut in Progress: Finishing the Scoters

Let's wrap up this scoter linocut, shall we? 

There has been some serious neglect going on for the one female bird in this image. Overall she should be a tiny bit warmer in tone than her male counterparts, so I rolled up a warm mid-gray and did some spot inking. 

I cut a mask to keep that warm gray out of the head of the male bird immediately in front of her, but I neglected to take a photo of it. (Consider this practice for your imagination muscles.)

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 8 rollup

Step 8 printed

That seems fine, so let's get on with the drama of the last dark color passes! The Step 9 rollup looks black, but it's more of a transparent charcoal-y color. We're not quite ready for the darkest darks just yet.

Step 9 rollup

As you can see, there is still a good amount of this dark color printing in the water reflections.  

Step 9 printed

Okay. That feels pretty good. Now I can remove almost all of the background material, since only a few small shapes in the water directly below the male birds remain to be printed.

It was here that I decided to try something I had not done before! Ooh. Exciting! (Well, maybe not exciting. Let's just call it... different.) 

I wanted one more dark value in the female bird, but I didn't want it to be AS dark as in the males. But I also didn't want to make a separate pass if I could avoid it. I decided to ink the entire block with this final black(ish) color, and then to wipe most of the color off of the female bird before I ran the block through the press. In theory enough ink would remain on the block to print, but with less contrast. 

You can see in this photo that the female bird has been "wiped out" and is much lighter before printing... 

Step 10 rollup

Hey! Look at that! It worked! There is a third layer of detail in the female bird, but it's not as dramatically dark as in the males. (Yes, I know, all you intaglio printmakers out there. Plate wiping is part of every single impression you make. But somehow it never occurred to me until now that I could apply it to such a large shape on a relief print. Duh.)

Step 10 printed

I was mostly ready to call these finished, except for that nagging little problem of some pale color at the very tip of the male birds' beaks. It's a tiny detail that most people probably wouldn't notice, but trust me. It's necessary.

Earlier in the process I had ruled out printing these little shapes with the press because there was a risk of the paper slipping, even in my registration jig. There's not enough "sticky" surface area in a 1/4" inked shape to reliably grab the paper.

Pochoir technique to the rescue! (Pochoir was used frequently in the 1920s and 30s to hand color fashion plates and decorative illustrations. Read more about it at the Rhode Island School of Design website.)

Step 11 mylar stencil

I cut the tiny shapes in a sheet of clear mylar. (You can see some other squiggle marks on the mylar, I used this piece multiple times to create patterns for my newsprint masks.) 

I used a stiff stencil brush to "pounce" the color on to each print by hand. The color is terrible in this close-up... it all looks quite yellow... but I think you can see that this creates a nice, thin layer of color that has the same texture as ink printed from a block. "Just painting on" the color would present a different texture and be quite jarring. 

Pochoir stencil detail

Yes. Exactly right. A subtle difference, but a necessary one. And now it's all finished...

Surf Scoters, reduction linocut, edition of 20-ish (I haven't sorted them yet)
©Sherrie York

... well, except for a title. I haven't quite sorted that out yet. I'm trying to think of something clever to suggest that the males are hanging about trying to get the female's attention... without using so many words! ("The Popular Girl"? "Act Casual"? "Three's Company"? "The Dating Game"? Yikes. Too many 70s television references!) 

What's up next? I'm undecided. I've been kicking around a couple of ideas, but not feeling a strong pull towards any of them yet. I have a bordering-on-abstract one that I'd like to try... but shhhhhh! I'm a tiny bit afraid of it. Don't tell anyone. 

Linocut in Progress: Zoom Out!

After fussing about with the little shapes of bright color in the birds' beaks for a couple of days, it was time to zoom back out and start tying things together across the entire image. There's more work to be done in the water before I can tackle the final details of the birds, and it's an interesting challenge to try to balance the values.

Here's the Step 6 ink rollup, a nice blue-green-gray. (Yes, that's the technical name for this color.)

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 6 rollup

(I do love when I get to use my nice 8" Takach roller, rather than muck about with little 1" brayers.)

And here's the print at this stage:

Step 6 printed

Okay. This seems to be more or less on track, although I know that at this point I really started agonizing over how dark to make some of the shapes in the water. Directly below the birds they will be reflecting some of the black of the birds' bodies... but I don't want those shapes to draw too much attention and look like they are just cut out and slapped on. 

All of which is to say that I'm at the thinking-takes-as-much-or-more-time-than-the actual-doing stage of this linocut.

What I apparently thought (according to the next photos in the chronology) was that the whole thing could use another dark.

Step 7 rollup

What I ALSO thought was that the tips of the birds' beaks still needed one more tiny bit of light color on them, but I didn't want to cut another mask and set up a whole color run just to make three tiny shapes. Instead I inked the entire block, and then used a shop towel to wipe the color off the beaks before printing.

 Did it take more or less time than cutting a mask and making a color pass for these tiny shapes? Probably six of one, half a dozen of the other. But the chances are greater for the registration to slip when there's only a tiny bit of ink on the block, so this seemed like the best solution while I thought about how to deal with these little shapes.

And after printing they looked like this:

Step 7 printed

Is the water mostly done now? Hm. Not quite, I don't think. And At this stage I realized I had been neglecting the issue of the one female bird in the image, who looks significantly different from her escorts. That situation will need to be addressed, stat.