Linocut in Progress: Building Waves

Once again it's a good thing I like blues and greens, because I am spending a lot of time with them right now. At this stage I must start building some contrast, but OOPH. There are so many tiny decisions to be made about what to carve away and what to leave in the foreground area!

The background is going to be very contrasty and dark, and the foreground is overall lighter... but I have to bring bits of the dark into the light (and vice versa) to keep it all cohesive. How much is too much, and do I use carving or ink value... or some combination of both... to accomplish my intention? (The answer is, of course, C... a combination.... because we are talking about me, and if there's a way to make a complicated thinking process even more so, that's where I go. In fact I live there.)

For Step 5 I took out more material than is obvious, since the water is so visually chaotic to begin with. But I think you'll at least notice that the background is getting a bit more activity, as well. I used scraps of leftover blue and green ink from Step 4 to mix another, slightly darker and more color-dense blue-to-green blended roll.

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 5
Click to embiggen. Please.

Step 5 was pretty satisfying. I felt that some more action was developing in the background and the color and value were pretty good. Onward!

Over several hours and a couple of Rogers and Hammerstein musical videos I carved many new details in the background, and removed great swathes of material in the foreground. Here's what the block looked like before I printed Step 6.

Step 6 block carved

And here's the result. It took me a couple of tries to get the value right; my first attempt was entirely too dark and I had a visual mess. But although I did manage to find a good value progression it's not entirely dark enough in the shadowed sides of the background waves, so this means.... one more pass to finish the water.

Reduction linocut, Step 6 printed.
Embiggen it!

Before I can finish the water, though, I need to address the ducks. Yes! Plural. There are two of them. The male out front is pretty obvious, but slightly above and to the left of him is the female. Right now she's just a shadow at the edge of the wave, so she needs to be brought to light... literally! There's also a wee tiny bit of rust color to be added to the male, which I will do by hand, rather than try to ink and print on the press. 

It's all very wet right now, so will need to sit for a couple of days. A brief slowdown is okay with me. I've been feeling like I'm fighting a cold for the past week –the irritating kind that doesn't get either better or worse. To deal with it I've discovered that the only reasonable action is random napping. 

In fact I feel a nap attack coming on right now, so I think ....zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.