Carrying on with the snowy linocut in progress. I do feel like I'm tempting fate just a tiny bit by imagining fresh snowfall, but here in Maine we should still be several weeks away from such things. (Although it rained here all day yesterday and I broke down and lit the wood stove for the first time this season, just to clear the chilly damp.)
After the greens-on-top-blue-across-the-bottom of Step 4, I cleared all the remaining material from the lower two thirds of the block. So satisfying to do so... and of course it means I'm now working with only a very small portion of the block. It should all go fairly quickly now...
So let's roll up a sort of middle-value green and print Step 5.
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| Reduction linocut in progress: Step 5 rollup |
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| Step 5 printed |
Okay! Feeling pretty good about that, although it's really too much green. I think we can remove everything from the block now that should remain green and concentrate on the trunks and branches. The ink rollup for Step 6 was a gray brown.
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| Step 6 printed |
Ugh. This is a terrible photo... so sorry! Apparently it's the only one I took at this stage, and I was working at night. I tried to adjust the photo a bit but only made it worse, so you'll have to use your imagination. The brown didn't read completely brown, but it wasn't this green. (And the snow was not purple.)
I was feeling good about the suggestion of a sunny gap in the upper right of the image, but wanted to emphasize that by bringing some of the tree trunks visually forward while also keeping them in shadow. First, however, I thought I should lighten the nearest ones just a smidge, so they could show more detail when the darks were added.
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| Step 7 rollup |
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| Step 7 printed |
Yes, okay... this photo has a bit too much contrast, but it's better than the previous one! You can see that the lightened trunks aren't really light. But they are light-er, which will hopefully allow for some more details in those closest trees, to help them feel even closer to us.
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| Step 8 rollup |
Back to a darker brown to bring out some details and move the cluster of trees forward.
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| Step 8 printed |
Another nighttime photo... Too contrasty, and now radically skewed because I was trying to avoid shadows from the overhead light. I have mentioned I'm not a photographer, right?
However.... we are super close to finished here. I think a small cluster of the closest trees needs to get hit with one more dark, and maybe that will be it. Really? In fewer than ten passes? Are we sure this is my work?
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| Step 9 rollup |
Only those two right-most trees received ink here. (The middle brownish-looking ones are just stained from previous color passes.)
And, voila! All done. (And this one is a proper scan with good contrast and no skew!)
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| "Stillness," reduction linocut, edition of 18, 10" x 8" ©Sherrie York |
This new linocut and more than two dozen other pieces are headed west for the opening of my solo exhibition at Blue Sage Center for the Arts in Paonia, Colorado. Show opens October 25 and runs through December 19. Do check it out of you're in the neighborhood!
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