More progress on the coot linocut

Things are moving ahead in the studio this week.... a little erratically, perhaps, but they are moving.

A recap of where we were a few days ago:

The third pass on this reduction linocut gave the water ripples more variety, but I decided it wasn't quite enough. I did some more carving and then applied another ochre-to-green pass on the right side of the imge.

More interesting, don't you think?

So now it's time, as I suggested before, to spend a little time with our buddy the coot. It's a funny sort of business here because he's mostly backlit. In case you're not familiar with the American coot, it's a dark gray bird with a black head. I find it challenging to hit the right value in cases like this... There are still some very dark reflections intended in the water and I don't want the bird to either stand out too much or get lost in the dark-to-come. Hm.

This first gray seemed a little wishy-washy, but I tried not to worry about it too much. Hardly any of it will remain in the final image.

Today I added a darker gray, and I flip-flop between thinking it's good and thinking it's too dark. Subsequent passes will decide whether I do, indeed, flip or flop.

 

Everything's a bit wet now, so there will be a pause of a couple of days before much more happens with this piece.