When the cleanup takes longer than the printing...

I did, indeed, manage to print all 18 linocut icons on Saturday. The printing itself didn't take too long, but cleaning 18 little blocks sure did! Ooph. It took the wind out of my sails in a big way, and I spent the rest of the day in a rocking chair with my nose in a book. Time to abandon the Wonder Woman persona.

I'm reasonably happy with most of the images, although there are one or two that I'm less pleased with now that they're printed. I'm going to scan everything tomorrow and send it off to the client and see what she has to say, so watch for at least a few critters to show their little faces here as they are approved. (Or not.)

You might be able to see from this deliberately vague photo that the images seem to have odd smudges top and bottom. This was also deliberate... I left small "railings" of uncarved lino along the edges of each block to support the brayer when inking and hopefully avoid too much stray ink where I didn't want it. Seemed to work. Since these are not prints to edition but illustrations to scan and have in a digital format, the extraneous blobs won't ultimately be seen. Photoshop, baby.

Of course there was that OTHER block in the jig on Friday, too.

I didn't intend to do yet another snow shadows piece, but I think I'm being subconsciously influenced by our complete lack of the white stuff in Salida this year. Snow all around us, but here in town? I don't think we've had an inch TOTAL all season. Not kidding. (Come to think of it, though... I did snow pieces this time last year, too.)

The big 16 x 20 piece is still mentally incubating, but I wanted something else to work on in the meantime. This new lino-to-be is a reworking of an image I did in black and white a few years ago. Block size is 9 x 12.

Funny. I just realized that Stuart Brocklehurst over at Wildlife with Pen and Brush started a snow piece this weekend, too. I'm intrigued by what he has going already, pop over and check it out.