Linocut in Progress: Pulling things back together

Maybe it's too soon to celebrate, but I think that newsprint mask-making time might actually be over! After isolating the two female ducks and establishing their overall body color, it's time to pull the image back together with some unifying color passes. 

Step 11 is a rich, transparent blue that will create shadows in a few areas of the females and bring the overall tone and value of the male birds back into line.

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 11 rollup

And here's where it landed us:

Step 11 printed

It's starting to come back together, but the females are still visually overpowering the males. It's time to really focus on those handsome boys. Here's the roll-up for Step 12, an even richer blue-gray. You can see that the farthest-distant female is almost completely removed from the block, and just a few shadow textures remain in the closest bird. Additionally, all the water except for a few details around the birds and a couple of waves in the foreground has also been removed.

Step 12 ink rollup

Aaannndddd... hooray! A nice day and some indirect light outdoors, so I was able to get a decent photo of Step 12 after it was printed. I also uploaded this shot at an embiggenable size, so you can click on it to get a better look at where everything stands. 

Step 12 printed, embiggenable with a click

We are really close now. I think I only need one more pass to finish up the birds... but I am undecided about whether I should mess around with two little sections of water that haven't yet been carved away. It might not be necessary to put a different color on them, but it also might be just the right little zing! if I do it right. We'll see what I decide when I get there...