Linocut in Progress: New year, new image

 Okay... I realize we are already halfway through February, but I've studiously avoided too much social media since the beginning of the year, which somehow has included not posting work in progress.

And, full disclosure: This image gave me some headaches early on, so not posting took away at least a little of the "performance anxiety" that gets added when I'm publishing progress in real time. 

Enough excuses! Let's start a linocut!

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 1 spot ink rollup

I don't think I've had an image start quite this boring in a long time... but here we go. No surprises here– the subject matter is a bird on the water. But it's a bird with a white belly, and I wanted a slight value shift in the reflection of that belly. Just a skosh of light gray needs to be here, so I did some spot inking and cut the first of what would end up being several newsprint masks.

Step 1 mask

Step 1 printed

Honestly, it hardly seems worth the effort, since most of this little patch of gray will still be covered by other colors, but there are few things worse than getting all the way to the end of a process and realizing if you'd only done one small thing FIRST, the end result would be better. *

(* Okay, there are a LOT of things worse than this. But when it happens, the disappointment is real!)

On to Step 2! A very straight-up color roll. But... whhaaaaaaaaaaat? What is with all this yellow? Where is Sherrie Standard Step 2 Blue?

Step 2 rollup

Step 2 printed

Yep, that's yellow. (Well, a pale yellow ochre, but you know what I mean.) And just wait. It's going to get worse. 

But as an aside– Come on, birders. I bet you already know what species this is.

Remember how I said three sentences ago that the yellow was going to get worse? Not kidding. No photo of the ink rollup, but it's pretty obvious what happened here.

Step 3 printed

At this point I was already questioning the wisdom of getting this much ochre on the page this early. Let's call that foreshadowing, and leave the headache that resulted from this decision for my next post, shall we?