Sunday, January 5, 2020

Linocut in Progress: In the pink!

Zooming right along... or perhaps, since the current linocut in progress is a seascape, I should say things are splashing right along. Whatever. Progress is being made.

It didn't take too long to get the block ready for the next color pass, as the first gray was really meant to show only as some subtle shadowing in the whitest bits of the wave, and the green is mostly under-color. But I wasn't ready to abandon that green yet, so for the next color pass I created a slightly darker and grayer version of it and blended that into a transparent blue-gray.


Step 2 rollup

Nice, eh? Very cheery colors to be printing in the winter.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 2

It's all rather satisfying at this point, as it often is when I'm only two steps along. Now I really have to start thinking. Oh, dear.

As I work on this piece I'm interpreting a section of a (typically horrible) photograph. Most of these little white dots are the result of sun glare off the water, and around many of the larger spots in the foreground the camera lens created a sort of lavender aura. Hm. I wonder if I can suggest that in some subtle way....

Time to get out the pink! I rarely use pinks and reds... they just don't come up often in the sorts of images that I find most appealing. But deep in my ink stash I have an old tube of magenta.... let's give that a try. Why magenta? Because the color underneath it is blue, of course! And I am trying to get to lavender.

And oh, right. There's some gray here, too, blended alongside the pink to add another layer of value to everything else in the image.

Step 3 ink rollup. Transparent gray and magenta

Aaaannndddd..... success! I am pleased with the variety of hue and tone in the image so far. It's all rather pastel-y, which is an unusual palette for me, but that will change with the next color pass. For now it's more carving, a little bit of drying time, and a good amount of cogitating on what comes next.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 3 printed


No comments:

Post a Comment

Linocut in Progress: The Third Act

Time to wrap up this linocut ! And we are wrapping at warp speed (see what I did there?)... because there are deadlines. Exhibition deadline...