Linocut(s) in Progress: Birds Everywhere! And in other news...

The little sparrow reduction print continues with its ugly duckling stage. Maybe "ugly" isn't the right word. More like "disharmonious" or something.

Whatever.

It just ain't right. Yet.

Sparrow linocut, Step 8

A second blend... and those questionable wavy shapes. Hopefully they'll be less obnoxious once I go on to the next step.

I took a little time out from this yesterday because after 8 colors in three days things were getting a little "rejecty" (That's a technical term. Trust me.) There's plenty of carving to do before the next color can be printed, so it's not like I'm sitting around twiddling my thumbs.

In fact, I'm so psyched by the possibilities now that I have a press, that I've embarked on another experiment.

This here is an 18 x 24 sheet of linoleum with 18 (count 'em) little bird images drawn on it. I've wanted to do some small sets of hand-colored prints for a while... My poor, neglected Etsy store needs some love!

The idea is that once all 18 of these images are carved for single-color prints I can ink the whole thing up and print them simultaneously on a full sheet (22 x 30) of watercolor paper. Chop 'em up, color 'em, et voila!

Of course a really smart printmaker would have put all the birds facing the same way so that the image could also be printed as a single large piece... which I intend to do one of these days. But little prints are the goal at the moment, so these are set up instead in a way that will make them easiest to carve. (Facing out as much as possible around the border, so I can just turn the block to work on each image.)

It's a heckuva lot of carving, but it will be a nice thing to work on in between other projects. I've got ANOTHER more complex reduction print in the drawing stage. I'd like that one to be at least 18 x 18, so I will need to have a solid registration system in place before hand. But there's a lot of drawing to do there first, too... so don't hold your breath.

In other news.... Guess who's got the cover of this month's Colorado Central Magazine! Here's a hint: It's me. Or rather, it's my lino. Looks nice, don't you think? The latest issue isn't up online yet, but here's a peek at the cover. I'm not ready for winter, but I'm definitely ready to print some new winter linos!