Sunday, August 25, 2013

Linocut in progress: Tern-ing slowly

Ink is drying unusually slowly, so this piece seems to be crawling forward. That may or may not be a good thing. Too much time to think between steps can be deadly to enthusiasm.

Common tern linocut, Step 8.

But I'm carrying on anyway. Here I've put another slightly darker gray in the underwing and body of the bird. I waffle a lot about whether these tones are too dark or not dark enough. I'm looking at a reference photo in which the shadows are almost black (a common problem with photographic reference)... and I don't want that. Instead I'm worrying that I've gone too pale.

Common tern linocut, Step 9.
But there's nothing to be done about it now, so I entertained myself with this little orange bill. It looks completely out of place at the moment, but there are some darks to go into the head and around the edges of the primaries, so I'm reasonably confident it won't be so obnoxious in the end.

The reduction linoleum block to this stage.
Not much left on the block at this point... so why do I think I have at least three colors to go?

6 comments:

  1. Hi Sherrie,

    The print is looking lovely!

    Can you tell me what paper you use that can take so many layers of ink?

    I am another printmaker admiring your work from afar (Wales, UK).

    Lee

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  2. that orange beak really makes the bird pop forward :)

    3 more colours?! there is hardly anything left of the block lol

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  3. The waves, indeed!

    Lee, I'm using Awagami Kozo, which is fairly thin. (I'm think it's 42gsm. I just ordered some 90 gsm to try.) The key is to apply each ink layer as thinly as possible.

    Oh, Jen... it's worse than that. Today it became clear I need FIVE more colors to finish this. Two in the bird, three in the water/trees.

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  4. 2 more in the bird? not much left to carve in that area o.0

    ReplyDelete

Linocut in Progress: Wait. Did I really finish in fewer than 10 steps?

Carrying on with the snowy linocut in progress. I do feel like I'm tempting fate just a tiny bit by imagining fresh snowfall, but here ...