Linocut in Progress: Let's get loony!

Now that I've been through an entire reduction print in my new space I feel a bit more confident about working here... and a lot more anxious to just get on with it. Of course there will be another interruption shortly... I'll be off to two weeks of workshops on Hog Island in about a week and a half. It feels a little odd that getting to the island is now a 20 minute proposition instead of the 20 hour expedition it frequently was trying to get there from Colorado.

But I digress...

Among the connections I made soon after I moved to Maine was the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI). BRI has a number of research focii, but they began with the common loon.

In the autumn of 2019 BRI will be hosting the International Loon / Diver Symposium here in Maine (Portland). Ahead of that event, three other artists and I have been asked to create works to be featured on promotional materials. I'm more than a little bit behind schedule, since it took so long to find a place to settle and to get Presston up and running again, so before the iris prints were dry I jumped right in to my next linocut.

Loons were made for printmakers. Their lovely, graphic, black-and-white plumage begs for a relief print interpretation. Not that you can see any of it here in the first color pass.

New reduction linocut, blended roll, step 1

The tricky thing is that I am lacking in firsthand reference material. Sure, we have loons here, but I haven't been in Maine long enough to really spend time with them. I've been obliged to cobble together ideas and reference from a variety of sources, in much the same way I work as an illustrator.

To be honest, it's the thing I most dislike about illustration– being required frequently to render subjects I have never personally seen.

While I was working on the iris print I did take the time to do some pencil studies from photographic reference of loons. It helped to familiarize me with details, at least a little, and I'm having to squeeze every last drop out of my inadequate personal recollections and photography.

Two separate inks rolled up at the same time, transparent green at the top,
transparent blue across the remainder of the block. Step 2

But that's enough whining. Once I took a deep breath and got started a lot (but not all) of that anxiety moved to the back seat. And by the second color pass I started to feel that familiar anticipation that makes printmaking the sweet agony that I return to again and again.

Step 2

I'm completely making up this color palette, imagining blues and greens and browns in the land and waterscape.

Step 3

I did make a rookie error right off the bat, though. 'Way back in Colorado I had decided that I should always start with an even, solid ink color– even if it's very pale– before laying down a blended roll. I failed to do that with this print, because I just plain forgot, and as a result I have some uneven color and lap marks in the lower half of most of the sheets.

I think (I hope) that this will become less obvious with additional color passes. If not... well... there will need to be some creative problem-solving at some point. Which differs from my usual working method how?

Right. It doesn't.