Linocut in Progress: No, really. I'm still here.

December. It's a thing. And it's a thing that I am glad is behind us. 

Hooray for a new year.!.. one which I hope will bring a bit more cheer than the last few have. It's hard to tell at the moment, since winter has finally arrived in Maine. Well, sort of. We've been on a rollercoaster of too warm with too much RAIN... with brief forays into a wee bit of snow and entirely too much ice. We're in a gloomy patch right now– gray, windy, rainy... with the dreaded freezing rain in the forecast for today. Ugh.

So, hey! I should be in the studio, right? 

And so I have been. Let's catch up, shall we?

The current linocut in progress has turned out to be more challenge than might have been wise this time of year. It's got some tricky color shapes to work out... horizontal marks in one color, vertical in a different color. And the image is inspired by a super-fuzzy, washed out photo full of indistinct shapes that I have to interpret as actual shapes. It's a lot of thinking for someone whose brain is as fuzzy as the photo these days. 

But, onward.

Linocut in progress: Step 3 rollup

Step 3! Let's do some color! Here's where the horizontal-one-color-vertical-another problem is already obvious. I've done a blended roll here, blue to green. While I have a roller wide enough to cover this entire block (18 x 18 inches), I don't really have the space in this studio to roll it out. I'm making do by using a smaller roller to run the blend in one direction and then turning the block to run it in the other direction. Get it?

Step 3 printed

Okay. The water is getting close, but you can see the problem here. There are grasses across the middle that will also want to be green (vertical), but of course I don't want green (or too much green) in the horizontal water shapes. The image is entirely too fussy for me to get excited about cutting masks for all that, but it's a problem I still haven't quite solved for myself. 

One of my best skills is avoiding big decisions, so let's pretend it's not a problem and go back to carving. 

Step 4 rollup

In fact, let's avoid the green problem by going back to gray instead! Yes, good plan. Here's the rollup for step 4, managed the same way with a smaller roller. Actually, TWO smaller rollers, as you see here. The larger one is only 8" wide, so running the blend from each end leaves an un-inked section across the middle. This gets filled in with the smaller 4" roller. Because adding as many steps as possible to each color pass is also one of my best skills. 

(For print equipment geeks out there, these beautiful brayers are made by Takach Press. They will set you back a pretty penny, but they are worth it. A joy to use. )

So, here we are with the printing of Step 4:

Step 4 printed

I am really looking forward to being finished with the water, but we're not quite there yet. I'd like to brighten up the greens a bit... and I can't forget that there are bird(s!) to keep track of, also. I predict masking in the future of THOSE shapes, at least. Stay tuned!