Linocut in Progress: Out of the blue.... and back again!

 Okay, then! Progress is happening, but this week it feels a little bit like that "one step forward, two steps back" sort of situation. But not really. Well, maybe. You can decide.

I decided that it was time to warm up/gray down the overall tone of the piece for Step 5, so a did a bunch of carving and rolled up a rather peculiar blended ink combo of gray to a sort of brown(ish).

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 5 rollup

I felt okay about the result.... at first.

Step 5 - printed

Yes, I want that warmer bit in the lower left of the image, and yes, I wanted to introduce some grayer blue. But after I sat with this for a while (and took up some more carving), I realized that it was a little too much brown too soon. Time to drag it back into the blue realm.

Step 6 - rollup

And yeah... that seems REALLY blue. But I have to remind you (and perhaps myself) that digital cameras don't play well with blues. They especially tend to make everything too contrasty! I struggled so much to take a photo of the print at this stage that I broke down and made a quick scan of it. Well, sort of quick. The piece is too large for my scanner, so I scanned it in pieces and stitched it together. But the ink was still a bit tacky, so I didn't go too crazy about getting it settled snug on the scanner bed. This is better than the camera view, but not perfect. 

Oh, wait! First I have to point out the cute little bird-shaped mask on the inked block. Because this is NOT a bluebird or even a blue bird. 

Step 6 printed

As I said... not a great scan, but better than a phone photo in terms of color and value. (That bright blue in the upper right is from light glare, and the dark blue vertical line in the left third is because of where I pieced the scans together.) 

So, yeah. I think it's going okay. A good amount of material needs to come out around the bird now, and then I can start working into the warmer, darker colors. I've been avoiding detail on the bird.... I'm a little afraid of it... but the reckoning will come soon. A few people who have seen the piece at this stage have identified the species already. Can you?