Linocut in Progress: Suddenly the end is near!

I guess the good news about small linocuts is that once you find a block of time (and resolve your idea), things can move along quickly. This piece is now just one or two steps away from completion.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 11

Aaaannnnd it's time to start playing with blended rolls. This one was a sort of medium green to lighter green, with the goal of subtly defining some background shapes.

And then another blend, this time a darker green to a medium, and more background shapes.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 12

It's feeling a bit TOO green now, but I'm not quite ready to move entirely away from this palette. The next blended roll went from a violet to a green. It seems intense on the inking glass, but there's a lot of transparent base involved.

And a few more bits of background foliage appear.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 13

The temptation now is to put a really high-contrast dark behind everything, but I think that might be too extreme. The shadows on a couple of the foreground leaves need to be strengthened, but I like the subtlety of the lower background as it is. I'm fairly certain that I want upper background to be darker, though... and maybe even a bit warmer in some areas.

Unfortunately everything is too wet now. I tried to pull another color this afternoon and promptly made a mess of the first "tester" print. With a big sigh I cleaned everything up and put it away for another day.

So, while it's all drying I'm going to poke around some sketches and see if I can get another piece started. The big bufflehead print FINALLY dried enough to stack and store so I have room on the drying rack again!

I'd like to get this finished this week, since next weekend I'm off to Loveland, Colorado for the opening of the Governor's Show. If you're in the area, it's an exhibition well worth a visit. At the Loveland Museum through May 29.