Linocut in Progress: No! I have not been kidnapped by aliens!

Neither have I been run over by a truck, nor succumbed to a dread disease, NOR given up on the linocut that was in progress 'way back in February. 

What HAS happened is that I got in a right tangle over it, and with a deadline looming I shifted gears and went to work on something else entirely. And, honestly, I got overwhelmed by many personal and professional things happening simultaneously, so I pulled away from the internets and tried to focus on the tasks at hand. 

I think the best plan will be to return us to the program already in progress before I take you down the side road. Spoiler alert: The "completion" of this current linocut will leave a loose end or two (or three). You'll see what I mean when we get there.

So let's get back to it, shall we?

****************

It's nice to spend some time working in just a small area... rather than over the entire 18 x 18 block, since it takes less time to feel like I'm actually getting somewhere. 

Then again, female mergansers are mostly just brown, which makes them more challenging to represent than their flashy male counterparts. Big, graphic shapes are great for a big, graphic medium. Small and subtle shapes... perhaps not so much.

But for this stage, at least, I dropped a nice medium brown over the birds, a female and two chicks.

And here's the overall look: 

Mini-step 16 printed

Okay... not bad. It's nice to see the chicks starting to resolve. But the brown feels a little too.... orange-y? So it was a transparent gray to the rescue.

Maybe rescue is too strong a word. I didn't think I was in (too much) trouble yet. Let's just call it the next logical step in the development of the image, shall we?

Yes. Let's go with that.

Here's what it looked like after "Mini-step" 17:

Mini-step 17 printed

I still have about a million misgivings about this entire image, but the only thing to do is keep plowing forward. Stay tuned! I promise the next installment is coming soon!