Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Wood Duck linocut: Steps 13-16

It's back to that attention-hogging male wood duck for the next step of the linocut-in-progress. It's nice, however, that he's starting to feel like a solid being and not a disjointed collection of color shapes.

Step 13
The water is very flat, but I don't want to go too crazy with it. My tendency is to get lost in all the fun contrasting shapes, but this time I'm trying to keep everything in a slightly more subdued palette. It is raining, after all.


A transparent blended green was rolled onto the entire block at this stage, which I like to do in order to tie everything together. Sort of like a thin glaze in painting.

Step 14. Livening up the water. Blended green roll printed.

Step 15. A little more action in the water.
Looking pretty okay, but I wanted some more action without letting the overall background get too busy. One more solid green pass over the entire block brought everything around.

Step 16. Things get silly.
There are two tiny shapes of color in the bills of both the male and the female. Really ridiculous to put them in, so of course that's right where I went. I temporarily abandoned the color for the male's bill... I might try to put it in by hand later. But the female now looks a bit like Jimmy Durante, with a big pink schnoz.

Everything is very tacky-wet at this stage... a lesson in patience when the end seems so near. But then again, I think I see five more things that need to be done before it's finished. (sigh)

4 comments:

  1. Sherrie, We need a meter to count our swings back and forth. The ducks are lovely but your water is beautiful.

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  2. I'm with Patrick, the ducks are lovely, and the transparent green made them 'belong' in the water, but the water itself is a triumph!

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  3. Ever tried to do transparent water with linocut? I wonder if that is possible at all..

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  4. Thanks, Patrick and Jane... it really was the shape of the water that brought me to this piece in the first place. The ducks are a bit incidental.

    Dorobo... Transparent colors aren't difficult, and I think with good planning (and maybe multiple blocks) it could be really effective.

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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...