Linocut in Progress (!!): Risky business

Hooray! I spent all day today in the studio. The second round of repairs to the press seems to be holding, the weather was cool and dry enough to work with the windows open and the ant infestation (about which I haven't even begun to rant) seemed under control... so I jumped on in.

Linocut in progress, Step 1

Well... actually... compared to how I usually jump in to these things, I did spend a fair amount of time thinking before I started. This image has an interesting (I hope) combination of warm and cool colors... a bit tricky to manage when one is using very transparent inks.

I decided to start with the warm color first... time will tell whether that was a good idea or not. Step 1 was a transparent peachy hue.

Step 2 was... lavender! My goal was to tone down the peachy color a bit and create an intermediate step before going to blues. Purple and yellow are complementary colors, so lavender seemed the best choice.

Linocut in progress, Step 2

These are quite lousy photos– I still haven't found a good setup for shooting work in progress– but you get the idea. It doesn't look at all lavender, but I didn't expect it to. It does have a nice sort of rosy tinge to it when you see it up close.

This particular image has some ink transfer from the Sharpie pen I used to draw the block, but I'm not worried about it. It will all be covered by subsequent color passes, and I rotate the prints with Sharpie transfer to the front of the printing queue, where they frequently end up as color testers anyway.

The next step will be a pale blue. I am debating the merits of making it a more opaque color by adding some white, but I'm also considering masking out some areas, too. I probably won't be able to print tomorrow, so I have a little time to think about it. That's not exactly the same as planning, but it's about as close as I ever get.