Linocut in Progress: Here we go again!

Seriously! I'm already 3 colors in to the next linocut. I told you there was no rest for the weary.

Can you guess what it is from the first pass?

Step 1, a yellow rectangle

Trick question! The first pass was a solid yellow rectangle. (It's not really warped in one corner. Blame the photographer.)

I bet you can identify the subject from the second pass, though.

Step 2, are those flower petals?

I printed the third color pass this morning and now we must pause for a bit. Partly because the ink is very wet, partly because I've had to spend the afternoon running around packing and shipping work to an exhibition, and partly because I didn't sleep well last night and am so tired I'm almost running backward.

But here's Step 3. I'm a little concerned that the second color, which seemed sufficiently dark in value in Step 2, will end up visually indistinguishable from Step 1, but there's nothing to be done about it now.

Step 3, definitely flowers. (You can see this step slightly larger with a click.)

Of course to make room for all these new, wet prints I've had to resort to an "overflow" drying system for the aspen trees. Yes, this is the binder-clips-on-dowel-prints-back-to-back-strung-across-chairs method. Does it look precarious? It is. But once upon a time this was the way I always dried my prints. Shudder.

The current system is so much more posh, don't you think? Unfortunately it doesn't provide enough room to work on more than 30 large prints at a time. Larger sheets of BFK Rives paper are too heavy to clip back-to-back with clothespins, plus it's a pain in the neck to manage double-hung prints while work is in progress.

The aspen trees seem to be drying fairly quickly, so hopefully by the time these sunflowers are finished I'll be able to rotate them to this "overflow" rack. Why? Because there's at least one more edition after these flowers that must be finished before December 1. Eek!