Linocut in Progress: More of this and more of that

After the printing struggles of the weekend I was a little bit relieved to wait a couple of days for ink to dry before moving on to the next color pass on the current lino in progress.

But move on I did. I kept it simple for Step 7: a transparent blue over the entire block. No mask, no blended roll, just a straight-up blue to bring some unity back to the image.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 7

Ooh... the shadows of the birds are getting close, but there's still a lot of work to be done with them so I can't get ahead of myself. I think the goal at this point should be to finish the fence posts and the background so I know what those final values are before trying to refine the sparrows.

I feel like the shadowed sides of the fence posts are reading as too green. I'd really like their undertone to be warmer. Back to the orange again.

The good news, however, is that with a little judicious masking I can print two colors at once. A transparent orange in the fence posts, and a brighter rust color on the birds.

Spot ink and a mask... two-for-one color!

And here's the result....

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 8

Okay then! I think that's on track. I think the next pass will be another transparent blue, to create the shadows on the foreground fence posts and add another value in the background. I'll likely mask out the birds to preserve their color as it is now... and then hopefully work on them after the blue. A gray and a brown in the birds, then one final blue? That's my thought at the moment, but you know how it goes in this studio. It ain't over until it's over... or until Sherrie surrenders.