Linocut in Progress: When "simple" things go cattywampus

 Cattywampus, in case you didn't know, is a technical printmaking term. It can be used to refer to registration problems, but in my studio it's just a catch-all phrase for the entire middle section of most image creation. As in, "now it all goes cattywampus."

Case in point:

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 8 rollup

In my previous post I had the audacity to suggest that I had a sort of plan (shocking!) for these tree trunks... that rolling some white ink over the top of existing color could suggest reflected light. We'll see now, won't we? 

You might note that it's not strictly white that's rolled up here... it's white with a skosh (another technical printmaking term) of purple in it. Because: complimentary color theory. Also, the color isn't rolled everywhere, as this white-over-color business is all about the tree trunks.

Step 8 printed

Hm. Sort of. It's not really the effect I am going for yet, but never fear! I honestly didn't expect it to be quite right yet. I just wanted to prevent everything from going too much darker at this point. 

So now... what's next?

Step 9 rollup

Wait, what? Yep. It's official. Sherrie has lost her marbles here. I'm sure there was some sort of logical reason for me to jump back in to this rather alarming color.... but at the moment what I was thinking eludes me. 

Step 9 rollup

Ha! Just kidding. I knew it all along. Look at that lovely, toned-down-but-too-dark, reflective-looking color in the main tree trunks. Don't mind that bright blue in the branches. I'll do... something.... about it. Later. 

Step 10 rollup

How about another layer of almost-white?

Step 10 printed

Oh, ye of little faith! (Why yes, I am looking at myself, too!) We can still pull this off, yes? 

Let's do a lot of carving in the meantime, and then start detailing these trunks....

Step 11 rollup

At this point I apparently lost track of a step, at least where photography was concerned. Here's Step 11 printed:

Step 11 printed

But there was a Step 12... more trunk/branch details and another pass of brownish gray that I didn't record except for this photo:

Steps 11 and 12 side-by-side

Getting close now, and I was finally starting to feel like I might pull the whole thing off despite myself. There's hardly anything left on the block at this point, so not much more fussing around I could do, anyway!

Step 13 rollup

And the final image, at last! 

"Golden," reduction linocut, 10" x 8"
Edition of 20, ©Sherrie York

Whew! Got there in the end. Another "simple" image of "a few yellows and some blues in the tree trunks" finally finished. (Note: insert eyeroll emoji here.)

So what's next? I think I'm moving on in the seasons and going to tackle a small snow scene. I've got a solo exhibition coming up in October and need to expand my inventory of smaller work, so I'll be sticking with this 8x10 format, or thereabouts!

Linocut in Progress: Getting ahead of the season?

When I was in high school (about a million years ago) my first "real" job was working in a retail clothing store. I remember being surprised/not surprised to unpack new inventory and find we were going to start hanging winter coats on the racks in July. It was 95 degrees outside and I was wrestling fleece, down, and (not always fake in those days) fur. 

Which all to say that you might be surprised/not surprised that I have decided to work on a strictly autumn scene for the current linocut in progress. Maine is in the throes of steamy green summer right now, but I am ready to think about my favorite time of the year... with crisper, drier air and a bit more color variety in the trees.

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 1 rollup

There's not going to be much in this image that needs to stay the white of the paper, so only a few cuts were required before I was rolling up a yummy blended yellow-to-peach first color pass.

Step 1 printed

And whaddaya know? I'm also working in a vertical format. What? That doesn't seem to happen very often. 

No time to debate the whys and wherefores of verticality. We have lino to carve!

Step 2 rollup

And, wheeeeee! Some brighter yellow and a more intense peachy color. Let's gooooo!

Step 2 printed

Well, would you look at that? I think we can already tell there might be a tree or two (or twenty) in this image. At this point I started to get mildly concerned about a lot of confusing color shapes that need to inhabit the lower third of the image... but I successfully put my imagined fingers in my mental ears (because my real fingers were rolling ink, of course!) and avoided making any decisions. Let's put some more orange on now instead!

Step 3 rollup

Yep. That is definitely orange. Is it too much? Maybe... maybe not.....

Step 3 printed

It definitely seems like a lot of orange, but I refuse to panic just yet. I might do so on the NEXT step, however, since I need to jump in and adjust the color of the tree trunks. These are aspen trees, so their trunks are white. But they are also in the shade, with all of the color coming from backlight... so they are more of a middling purple-gray. 

It's a color that will be tricky to achieve over all these warm tones, but I did NOT want to cut a ridiculously complicated mask to isolate all the trunks. I'm hoping that a long-ago experience in a similar situation will rescue me from myself once again. 

Yep, it's time to cross our fingers and do a little dance for the gods of Opaque White! They'll never let us go back to white-white, but I'm hoping they'll give us a useful base tone from which we can build our new trunk color. 

Stay tuned!

Upcoming Reduction Linocut Workshop at the Farnsworth Art Museum

"Treasured Path," reduction linocut © Sherrie York

We woke to some soft frost this morning on the midcoast, so there's no denying the autumn anymore! 

I've got one more workshop on the schedule before the snow flies and the deep dark season arrives. Actually, it's the weekend WHEN the deep, dark season arrives, since the time will change overnight November 2.

So, quick! Join me for a two-day reduction linocut class at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. 9:30-4:30, November 2 and 3. Once you've had experience with a couple of new skills, your winter will fly on by in a whirl of printmaking! Well, it could. 

Linocut in Progress: An autumnal endeavor

Things ramped up considerably in the studio this past week. Multiple deadlines loom and once again I'm hearing the relentless drum beat. Gotta get it done, gotta get it done, gotta get it done.

It's not my favorite way to work, let me tell you. But it seems to happen with annoying regularity. Every few months, in fact. There are a raft of exhibition deadlines in April, and now... A stack for November.

No time to waste, so as a reminder, here's Step 1:

As I began this new linocut I remembered a promise I made to myself:  No more blended rolls on the first pass, especially on a piece that is 18" x 18." Clearly I am completely untrustworthy, since I broke that promise and did it anyway.

It was with Step 2 that technical problems appeared.

A couple of things are happening here to create uneven ink coverage. The first issue was the use of a too-small roller. I used an 8" instead of 18," because I was feeling lazy about clean up.  It's just one solid color, won't be a problem, right? 

Um, wrong. I found it really difficult to get ink evenly on the block with a too-small roller. And...

I've been struggling to get ol' Presston to set even pressure on larger pieces. I zeroed out, and zeroed out again, and still there were problems. The dark line down the middle of this print is caused by a single sheet of newsprint, placed under one side of the block in an attempt to even out the pressure. Seriously. That's how much difference one newsprint-thickness of pressure can make. 

I pulled up the collar of the adjustment dial and jammed a screwdriver into my thumb trying to get it back in place. Panic mounted as I hunted for a bandage and considered whether I would have to print all these deadline-driven pieces by hand. But finally, somehow, I got it all settled. 

Step 3. Another solid color, but this time I got out the big roller. No problems with ink coverage, and the pressure problems have been solved. You can still see the newsprint mark in this particular print, but it's less pronounced and it's going to be covered soon anyway.

And then the fun started. By fun I mean tedium. I spent large portions of three days chipping tiny chunks out of a large area of the block. Chip, chip, chip, chip through several documentaries about 1960s sitcoms, and the 50-year history of Star Trek, and the making of Star Wars. Oh, and a bunch of old Dean Martin shows. Honestly. It's all on YouTube, which is important, since I haven't had a television for several years.

Saturday night I pronounced myself ready for the next color pass and Sunday morning I mixed up two lovely colors: a sort of minty green and a pale yellow ochre. And by lovely I mean kind of questionable. The ochre will be dry grasses, the green is for aspen leaves that haven't yet turned yellow. The blended roll helps make a smooth transition between background and foreground.

And see? The green doesn't look nearly so obnoxious with the yellows under it.

Time out now for thinking... How much of this light green will remain? How will I start to approach the grasses? And what time is lunch?

Fieldwork Friday: St. Elmo/Chalk Creek

This morning I headed upriver, north through the Arkansas River valley. Just before the tiny raft-stop of Nathrop I turned west up a county road, across the valley floor and into Chalk Creek canyon.

Past the fish hatchery and Chalk Cliffs, past the bighorn sheep habitat at Love Meadow, past the Agnes Vaille and Cascade Falls lies the not-so-ghosty-anymore ghost town of St. Elmo. I hadn't been up there all year (it's about 45 minutes or so from home)... it seemed like time for a visit.

As is usual for "peak" color season, I spent more time dawdling with the camera than actually drawing. By the time I reached St. Elmo the hordes of weekend ATV enthusiasts were arriving, so I made this little sketch and then turned back around for home.

There's an urgency to this time of year. I'm sure I've written about it before. A Rocky Mountain autumn is fragile and ephemeral. Resplendent, glowing hillsides last only until the next big wind or early snow and once October hits it feels like we're living on borrowed time. October. That's tomorrow. Ummm.... I'll see ya later.

Attraction distraction

Is it any wonder I find it difficult to concentrate in September when this sort of thing is going on outside? Autumn was so slow to get started and now... WHOOSH! Blink and you'll miss it. So don't blink. And don't miss it.

David and I took a picnic supper up Marshall Pass this evening and despite less-than-perfect light conditions we managed to fill more hard drive space with our annual gazillion shots of aspen.

 

Woodcut experiments

Tiny woodcut experiments

Okay.... raise your hand if you're the sort of person who decides to try a brand new recipe on the night you will have dinner guests.

Or perhaps you can remember any number of times when you agreed to perform a task ("Sure. I can do that.") and then immediately set about learning how to do it. Usually under deadline.

Yup. That's me, too. Which is naturally why I decided to participate in my first-ever [Baren]forum print exchange now. It's Barenforum's 50th exchange, with 100 printmakers participating. (As opposed to the usual 30-something.) The format is tiny (2.5" x 3.5"), but 101 impressions are needed for the exchange. By October 1. Sorry, November 1. Wait. I think. I should check.

I know from previous experience with small prints that registration on tiny sheets of paper is far more challenging than it is on larger sheets, so a single-color image seems to be in order. But hmmm.... what to do and how to do it? Border print? Bleed print? Naturally I've also decided to carve wood instead of lino, which means I'm using less familiar tools on a less familiar surface. Experimentation required!

I'm not completely satisfied with any of these, but I think I'm headed in the right direction.

Meanwhile, we had a spectacular sunset this evening. Not just in the west, but in the entire sky. All of town glowed pink and orange. It would be challenging to try to interpret such images as relief prints. I don't think I'd have the slightest idea how to start. Which means.... Uh oh. Must. Resist. Idea. At least until 101 other little prints are done.

Aspen Glow

Clever David took some of our (hundred zillion) autumn color photos from the weekend and made a slideshow with one of his brand new tunes as soundtrack. Happy first full day of fall to you!





PS: And this is a screen shot from the nearby Monarch Pass webcam THIS MORNING. Uh huh.

Getting away close to home

So much happened in the last week that any sort of coherent story arc is probably impossible. Let's just settle for an image-heavy travelogue and return to our regularly scheduled program tomorrow...

Somewhere in the midst of our insane summer schedules, the DM and I drew a big circle around September 17-20 and made plans for a getaway. But by the beginning of last week it was clear that a multi-day journey away from home wasn't going to happen, and we had no idea how those long-awaited days would unfold.

Thursday night and Friday morning David had gigs in Manitou Springs, so at least we could get out of town for one night. After good gigs and great visiting with printmaker pals we made a quick trip east on to the plains. I wanted David to see the Paint Mines.

We live in the mountains, but I have long been a prairie girl. I love the plains... and the myriad ways grasslands sneak up and bite your misconceptions right in the butt. The plains are NOT flat. They are NOT empty. And they are definitely NOT boring. 

The Paint Mines near Calhan are a great example of a prairie surprise. Even after you park the car and start up the trail, there's no indication of the wonders that await you. It all looks like grassland until you crest the hill and find this amazing eroded gully.

And THEN you leave the main trail and wander up the gully to find these fabulous hoodoos! On the prairie! (Or maybe that's IN the prairie.) Oh. Yeah.

We explored for a bit, I made a few thumbnail sketches (can you find me with my sketchbook in the shade?), and then we headed home to Salida.

The remainder of the weekend we took advantage of fabulous autumn weather and became tourists in our own country.. spending time on Marshall Pass (Saturday) and around Twin Lakes (Sunday). There comes a point when you realize that it's ridiculous to keep taking hundreds of photos of aspen when you already have hundreds of others and not one comes close to recording the spectacle. You don't stop, of course. But you do know it's ridiculous.

Marshall Pass, south and east of Salida.

I have... I don't know... hundreds... of shots like this. 
Doesn't stop me from taking more.

Secret location above Twin Lakes, north of Salida.

Ditto.

Willis Gulch area, on the Independence Pass road above Twin Lakes.

Tomorrow we'll get back to exhibition news and thumbnail sketch updates. (65 and counting for September!) But in the meantime... find your autumn spectacle and go sit in it for a while. For me, at least, it was a good reason to get away close to home.

Okay, so the autumn isn't COMPLETELY over

Views from the trail this morning. Snow tonight, I think.

It's been snowing on Monarch Pass all day.

I tried to bring home an interesting piece of sticker-y bush to draw this morning, but DUH! It stuck to my gloves and disintegrated in a pile of seeds. (sigh)

Warning label

My friend Brenda hangs a poster in her home workspace that says, "It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others," or some such interpretation of that theme.

And that's a little how I feel about today. FINALLY this morning I got out for the long-neglected walk, and OOPH. The season has changed and I missed the entire process! Travel and work and an unfortunate encounter with an ice-covered step kept me either on the run or under an ice pack for most of the last month, and while I was away my familiar landscape got an extreme makeover. One portion of "my" trail has been scraped away by hospital-constructing bulldozers. Another has been widened and covered with new gravel. Yet another has been denuded: large clumps of willow taken out around the lake to make room for more fishermen. (I guess.)

The swallows are completely gone and the juncos have come down from the high country. Many trees are completely bereft of leaves. And I am chagrined that I wasn't there to note the change in gradual increments instead of great swaths. (This is the part about serving as a warning to others: do not let doing interfere with being!)

My one consolation is that the "good winter ducks" have started to arrive: ring-necks, gadwall and wigeon are in. A few grebes, a few mergansers.-- and one handsome wood duck. Sands Lake's lone summer coot has 8 or 10 buddies now, and an osprey haunts Frantz Lake before continuing south.

The milkweed has transitioned from pink flowers to brown husks, so I brought a chunk in from the trail to draw this afternoon. My original intention was just to make a pencil drawing, but the temptation of a brush close at hand was too great. I'm not sure I like the drawing as well with the color... but there you have it.

And yes, I'm walking tomorrow- before it starts snowing or something!

Here and gone

A surreal moment this past week: The day after I got home from New Mexico, a favorite college chum I hadn't seen in 24 years, and with whom I hadn't even been in contact until a few weeks ago, turned up on my doorstep.

We managed to squeeze a lot of running around into the not-quite-an-entire-day we had. The NEXT day I found I was really glad I had taken photos of him at Cottonwood Lake and on top of the pass, otherwise I might have thought it was all a crazy dream. Here. And gone.

Home is starting to feel a little like a crazy dream, too, since I'm off this afternoon to the east coast again. Beantown, here I come! (Here. And gone.)

But autumn has arrived in the high country. Aspen trees and black bears are pulling their attention inward.... like me they seem manic one day and introspective the next. My admonition to you all: get out and be a part of it. Autumn will be here and gone before you know it.