Linocut in Progress: Finishing the Scoters

Let's wrap up this scoter linocut, shall we? 

There has been some serious neglect going on for the one female bird in this image. Overall she should be a tiny bit warmer in tone than her male counterparts, so I rolled up a warm mid-gray and did some spot inking. 

I cut a mask to keep that warm gray out of the head of the male bird immediately in front of her, but I neglected to take a photo of it. (Consider this practice for your imagination muscles.)

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 8 rollup

Step 8 printed

That seems fine, so let's get on with the drama of the last dark color passes! The Step 9 rollup looks black, but it's more of a transparent charcoal-y color. We're not quite ready for the darkest darks just yet.

Step 9 rollup

As you can see, there is still a good amount of this dark color printing in the water reflections.  

Step 9 printed

Okay. That feels pretty good. Now I can remove almost all of the background material, since only a few small shapes in the water directly below the male birds remain to be printed.

It was here that I decided to try something I had not done before! Ooh. Exciting! (Well, maybe not exciting. Let's just call it... different.) 

I wanted one more dark value in the female bird, but I didn't want it to be AS dark as in the males. But I also didn't want to make a separate pass if I could avoid it. I decided to ink the entire block with this final black(ish) color, and then to wipe most of the color off of the female bird before I ran the block through the press. In theory enough ink would remain on the block to print, but with less contrast. 

You can see in this photo that the female bird has been "wiped out" and is much lighter before printing... 

Step 10 rollup

Hey! Look at that! It worked! There is a third layer of detail in the female bird, but it's not as dramatically dark as in the males. (Yes, I know, all you intaglio printmakers out there. Plate wiping is part of every single impression you make. But somehow it never occurred to me until now that I could apply it to such a large shape on a relief print. Duh.)

Step 10 printed

I was mostly ready to call these finished, except for that nagging little problem of some pale color at the very tip of the male birds' beaks. It's a tiny detail that most people probably wouldn't notice, but trust me. It's necessary.

Earlier in the process I had ruled out printing these little shapes with the press because there was a risk of the paper slipping, even in my registration jig. There's not enough "sticky" surface area in a 1/4" inked shape to reliably grab the paper.

Pochoir technique to the rescue! (Pochoir was used frequently in the 1920s and 30s to hand color fashion plates and decorative illustrations. Read more about it at the Rhode Island School of Design website.)

Step 11 mylar stencil

I cut the tiny shapes in a sheet of clear mylar. (You can see some other squiggle marks on the mylar, I used this piece multiple times to create patterns for my newsprint masks.) 

I used a stiff stencil brush to "pounce" the color on to each print by hand. The color is terrible in this close-up... it all looks quite yellow... but I think you can see that this creates a nice, thin layer of color that has the same texture as ink printed from a block. "Just painting on" the color would present a different texture and be quite jarring. 

Pochoir stencil detail

Yes. Exactly right. A subtle difference, but a necessary one. And now it's all finished...

Surf Scoters, reduction linocut, edition of 20-ish (I haven't sorted them yet)
©Sherrie York

... well, except for a title. I haven't quite sorted that out yet. I'm trying to think of something clever to suggest that the males are hanging about trying to get the female's attention... without using so many words! ("The Popular Girl"? "Act Casual"? "Three's Company"? "The Dating Game"? Yikes. Too many 70s television references!) 

What's up next? I'm undecided. I've been kicking around a couple of ideas, but not feeling a strong pull towards any of them yet. I have a bordering-on-abstract one that I'd like to try... but shhhhhh! I'm a tiny bit afraid of it. Don't tell anyone. 

Linocut in Progress: Zoom Out!

After fussing about with the little shapes of bright color in the birds' beaks for a couple of days, it was time to zoom back out and start tying things together across the entire image. There's more work to be done in the water before I can tackle the final details of the birds, and it's an interesting challenge to try to balance the values.

Here's the Step 6 ink rollup, a nice blue-green-gray. (Yes, that's the technical name for this color.)

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 6 rollup

(I do love when I get to use my nice 8" Takach roller, rather than muck about with little 1" brayers.)

And here's the print at this stage:

Step 6 printed

Okay. This seems to be more or less on track, although I know that at this point I really started agonizing over how dark to make some of the shapes in the water. Directly below the birds they will be reflecting some of the black of the birds' bodies... but I don't want those shapes to draw too much attention and look like they are just cut out and slapped on. 

All of which is to say that I'm at the thinking-takes-as-much-or-more-time-than-the actual-doing stage of this linocut.

What I apparently thought (according to the next photos in the chronology) was that the whole thing could use another dark.

Step 7 rollup

What I ALSO thought was that the tips of the birds' beaks still needed one more tiny bit of light color on them, but I didn't want to cut another mask and set up a whole color run just to make three tiny shapes. Instead I inked the entire block, and then used a shop towel to wipe the color off the beaks before printing.

 Did it take more or less time than cutting a mask and making a color pass for these tiny shapes? Probably six of one, half a dozen of the other. But the chances are greater for the registration to slip when there's only a tiny bit of ink on the block, so this seemed like the best solution while I thought about how to deal with these little shapes.

And after printing they looked like this:

Step 7 printed

Is the water mostly done now? Hm. Not quite, I don't think. And At this stage I realized I had been neglecting the issue of the one female bird in the image, who looks significantly different from her escorts. That situation will need to be addressed, stat.

Linocut in Progress: It's the little things

Well, I dropped the ball on narrating the progress of the scoter linocut, so let's see if I can reconstruct the steps based on photos.

For Step 4 I needed to do some spot inking to get the crazy color of the male birds' beaks going, plus small bits that will be reflected in the water. The best way to contain this was to cut some newsprint masks.

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 4 mask

Masks cut... time to roll out some ink! For those who might not be familiar with Atlantic sea ducks, these are Surf Scoters– another species invented for printmakers, because the beaks of the male birds are just ridiculously colorful. 

Or maybe that's just colorful and ridiculous.

Step 4 rollup

Here is the ink roll-up. A bright orange, applied selectively and then isolated by the newsprint mask before printing. The mask shapes, by the way, are cut a little oversized in areas where I know the final image shapes will be defined by the darker colors to come. Anyone who worked as a graphic designer in the pre-computer paste-up era will recognize this as "trapping." Rather than risk an unwanted white space if registration gets a wee bit out of whack in the next layers, one prints shapes a tiny bit larger so the subsequent layers will neatly overlap. 

I don't think I explained that very well. Stand by to see the print of this step and maybe it will make more sense. Here's the mask in place over the inked block, ready for printing.

Step 4 mask in place

And here's the print. Can you see how the orange shapes overlap the previous blue at the top edges of the birds' beaks? This overlapping area will ultimately be overprinted with a really dark color, creating a clean line around the top of the beak and avoiding a white gap that might occur if I had tried to just print the orange to butt up to the darker shapes. You'll see. I promise.

Step 4 printed

But of course this bright orange isn't the only outrageous color in the beak of a male Surf Scoter. Look at THIS!

Step 5 rollup

I did a wee bit of carving, rolled up this red, and again used a mask to contain the color for printing.

Step 5 printed

These are certainly birds with distinctive schnozes. But it's time to move on from these little bits of color and get some value contrast going. Stay tuned!