Tuesday, August 23, 2022

Linocut in Progress: Back into the studio!

Goodness. 

I knew it had been a while since I posted anything here, but good grief! More than two months? That is rather appalling, and it doesn't seem possible.

But then, that's summer. It always seems to disappear in a morass of busy-ness punctuated by stretches of lethargy when it's too hot and humid to move or even think. 

A couple of weeks ago the weather, my schedule, AND my attitude started to improve, and I got myself back into the studio. I've been feeling for some time that I wanted to try something a bit different, so I dug out a large piece of lino (18 x 24 inches!... about 46 x 61 cm) and drew up a complex image that I (ahem) intended to print in a single color.

If that quote about roads and good intentions just popped into your mind, well.... you're not wrong.

It took less than a day for me to stray from the path and wonder if perhaps a little color wouldn't hurt. I decided to carve for white and then print a layer of rough color... nothing special or careful... and then I would carve for the "final" black layer.

Step 1 rollup

Sure. Why not? I mean, if I hated it, I could always just finish the carving and print as straight black-and-white. Right? Right?

Step 1 printed

I slapped some color on to the block willy-nilly and printed it. Okay. Interesting, sort of. Any edition I might come up with will be variable, but I don't hate the idea. 

Althooooooough.......hm.

This color seems a little too sketchy. It would probably be distracting under a single black layer. "One more" random color pass to even things out couldn't hurt, could it?

Step 2 rollup

I carved the block some more, darkened the leftover inks from the first color pass, and did a second haphazard roll-up.

Step 2 printed

In general I felt better about that decision, but the color overall seemed a little too bright. Too yellow. (Which is hard to tell in this photo... the light has been terrible for photography lately.) If I were to go ahead and carve the entire image and then plop straight black over this...well... I don't think it will look as nice as it might if I tone things down a bit. 

(You can absolutely see where this is going now, can't you?)

I carved some more, telling myself the entire time that I could still print a "plain old black-and-white version" because I hadn't crossed the threshold of removing material from the block that would create awkward visual holes in the image. I mixed a color that was very greenish, and another slightly warmer gray... and printed a third layer.

Step 3 printed

Okay.

That's more like it. I can go ahead and just cut the whole block now for a final pass. Four steps... that's more than I expected, but okay. This is a BIG block. It's taking a long time to carve even for these not-very-intricate stages. It will be good to just focus on carving for several days and be done with it.

Except that, of course, that's not what I did. Because as the prints sat there staring at me with their mottled ochre-and-gray attitudes, the little voice in my head started suggesting that the color could be just a bit more interesting if I stopped and did "just one more" stage. 

Sure. Just one more.  

5 comments:

  1. Looking good as always....and of course I can't wait to hear just how many more layers there will be ;o)

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    1. Lisa! So funny... I woke up thinking about you and remembering the heyday of blogging! I hope you're well. Not TOO many more layers, mostly because every layer had multiple colors! :-D

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  2. Hah! I love how this one evolved! But it's a fantastic print, and the subject matter is so perfect for the technique you ended up with. Going for a sort of haphazard roll-up with a muted, blurred palette to do a tidal pool linocut? ::chef's kiss::! And now I want to try doing this. Like you said; you can always end up with a one-color linocut. Until you don't... ; )

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  3. Replies
    1. Hahaha! Thanks for breaking out of your anonymity! And "you always can until you don't" sounds like it should be a t-shirt. ;-)

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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...