The forward was simple enough. If you've been following along you know that I warmed up the fence posts in the last color pass. Here at color pass number nine I deepened the shadows with another transparent blue.
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| Reduction linocut in progress: Step 9 |
The blue was rolled across the entire block, so it toned down the shadowed sides of the birds' rusty caps, deepened the shadows of the fence posts and birds, and added another value in the background. All good, except that there were two small things bothering me.
1: In the foreground the four fence posts on the right side of the image have darker lines through them. I had wanted these to be a little warmer than the rest of the tones in the sunny side of the posts, but along the way they just got too dark.
2: The shadowed sides of the birds are a little too purple. Our fence-sitters are chipping sparrows, and their bodies are a light gray. Yes, they will look less so in shadow, but I just felt that I need to pull them back a bit. The solution seemed to be some spot-inking and masking.
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| Spot inking |
The tricky part is that it meant getting out some opaque white ink... which I don't do very often. I mixed a nice gray for the birds... and a mostly-white for the fence posts.
It wasn't on purpose that the fence-post white was a wee bit pink. Despite my best efforts, apparently I wasn't able to get my little 1-inch brayer completely red-free at the last clean-up, so some pink tone snuck in there. (One of the reasons I almost never use red.) It wasn't a problem, though. I didn't want this color to appear white... and wouldn't be able to get back to pure white on the print, anyway. A hint of red won't hurt anything, and might even keep the color a little warm.
The two areas in question were separated enough to allow for spot inking, and then....
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| And yes, another mask |
Of course I cut some masks. This one served to contain the color in the areas I wanted it and protect the rest of the print from contact with the block, just in case some previously-printed areas weren't entirely dry.
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| Reduction linocut in progress, Step 10 |
These changes are quite subtle, but I feel satisfied that they needed to be done. We're getting close to the end now. The backs, wings, and tails of the birds are brown, and then I think one... mayyyybbeee two more transparent blue passes and it should be done... fingers crossed!
the grey is very subtle but works well here :)
ReplyDeleteWe'll see what happens when the brown goes in and the last shadows! *bites nails*
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