Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Linocut in Progress: Argh! Not quite done! and..... a celebration to come.

Let's start with the celebration, shall we?

This post... this one right here... is Brush and Baren's 1,000th post! Holy cow! Surely something must be done to celebrate, but at the moment I am besieged by deadlines and am not able to present a suitable party atmosphere. For now let's just say, "Rah!" and get back to work.

And dangit... there's still work to be done on this piece. I really thought I'd have it licked today, but it appears I need one more dark in a few places. But first...

Snow scene linocut, Step 13

At Step 13 I was reasonably satisfied with the greens. Now to resolve those darn tree trunks.

The trees on the right are in a bit more light than the ones on the left. Because they are getting a bit of direct sun the trunks on the right are also warmer in color temperature. Hm. Let's try this:

Snow scene linocut, Step 14

Two colors in one pass! They are strange colors, I will admit. I don't know if this idea will work or not, but I don't intend for much of either of these colors to show after the next pass, so my fingers are crossed.

The little bit of problem-solving that had to happen here was how to manage inking these two colors AND not destroy the previous colors in the lower part of the image during printing. The solution looked like this:


That's each color rolled separately and a strangely-shaped newsprint mask across the lower part of the block. The mask does a great job of protecting the lower part of the print when it all goes through the press.

At this point I probably should have stopped, since the inks were pretty wet. But I really wanted to finish today, so I marched on ahead with a brown.

Snow scene reduction linocut, Step 15

Ooh. So close... but not quite! And now everything is definitely too wet. (sigh)

The good news/bad news at this point is that I have to go away for a couple of days. The good news is that the inks will have time to dry. The bad news is that I'm leaving without the satisfaction of a finished print. Rats. That's two celebrations delayed, but maybe it will mean a doubly-fun party when I get back.

4 comments:

  1. Let's have a blog party when you get back to celebrate the print's finish, post 1000, and you, Sherrie!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Congrats on your 1000 posts! Takes a lot of work and commitment to do all the marketing that you do. Amazing all the work you do by your self and still create beautiful prints.

    BTW a technical question? Are you still using mat board to hold your lino blocks with the registration pins? I have a similar issue with my woodblock work and need to get a fool proof way to do multi-color prints.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Still trying to figure out when I'll have a blog party, but thanks for the felicitations!

    Doug, yes... pins are taped to mat board frames. Works a treat, although I've noticed my mat boards are starting to get a bit ratty. We'll see if it gets harder to keep the blocks straight in them.

    ReplyDelete

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...