Linocut in Progress: The final step... twice. No. Three times.

 Okay, let's wrap this thing up, shall we? How much more can there be? There's almost nothing left on this block! The background is done, the tree is done. (99% done) All that needs to be done is a slight darkening of the bird's head markings, and maybe a few tiny dark spot in the tree branch, just to tie it all together. 

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 14 rollup

At this point I made a proper scan so you can get a better idea of the actual color balance. We're finished, right?

Proper scan at Step 14, click to embiggen

Well, yes, that all looks nice and I'm satisfied (as much as I ever am) that this image reflects what I saw out my window. But what's missing for me is the why. Why is this little chickadee all fluffed up and snugged up next to the tree trunk!

Because it was raining, that's why! You can see a couple of drops on the underside of the foreground branch, but I wanted to suggest a more active rain situation. I had considered cutting away white lines for the rain at the very beginning of this process, but it seemed a risky idea, since I had no idea how many lines I wanted and whether white was really going to be the color they needed to be. 

I decided to complete the entire image sans rain, hoping that a decent image would emerge with or without that extra bit, and to use a second block as an experiment in overprinting. 

Thus began several days of headscratching and block carving and a bit of test printing. The flaws in my first idea became quickly apparent, so I abandoned block #2 and started over with block #3. After a few more tests I settled on these few lines and a medium-light gray ink.

Second block, Step 15

Final (?) stage, click to embiggen

I thought I was done at this stage... subtle, but a nice suggestion of rain a la Japanese printmakers. I made a scan, called the file FINAL. But after a few days I decided it needed one more bit of something.

More carving of these little lines happened, and then a layer of transparent white ink was rolled up.

Step 16 rollup

This was super tedious to print! Difficult to keep extraneous ink out of the background, so every inking required several minutes of wiping out around the lines. But I got there in the end.

Here's a scan of the FINAL final, embiggenable for a better view if you click on it.

"Rainy Days and Mondays," reduction linocut
Edition of 18 on BFK Rives, 6"x12"

Whew. Now it's time to figure out what's next!