What's-It-All-About Wednesday! "Dinner Party"

 

"Dinner Party," reduction linocut, 18" x 18", edition of 18

Well, hello there! I'm a little bit leery about making the following statement, a little superstitious about "jinxing" things, but I think I am finally coming out of the long, dark tunnel that has been the last few months. 

In a making-art-for-a-living life there are always ups and downs. Ideas, and enthusiasm for them, wax and wane. But this year? Wow. This year there has been a whole lot of wane. 

The good news is that I've started to kick around some new ideas and putter around in the studio again. In fact today I started to draw up a new lino and prep the paper for it. That hasn't happened in a while. 

There's nothing yet to show for the effort, however, so while I'm stirring that particular pot I thought it would be nice to thaw out the periodic "What's-It-All-About Wednesday" posts. And since I've been seeing a lot of buffleheads around lately... well... let's take a look at Dinner Party.

This piece is a couple of years old, but it remains a favorite. Two pair of buffleheads have come together to ride the swells and search for a meal; in fact one of the females has already found a tasty appetizer. 

Small and feisty, buffleheads are constantly in motion. Back in Colorado I always had a heckuva time deciding exactly how many buffies were overwintering on my local pond, since I could never be sure I was seeing all of them on the surface of the water at the same time. Pop up! Down! Up! Down! Constantly.

It's challenging to suggest all that busy-ness in the sort of stop-motion view of an image on paper, but I tried to do so by ramping up the color and texture of the water and by giving the birds very alert postures. They could all dive back down to the underwater buffet line at any moment. 

Interestingly (I think), buffleheads are cavity nesters. That's right. A bird that spends all of its time on and in the water... raises its young in holes in trees. And if you've never watched day-old ducklings leap out of a tall tree... well. You owe it to yourself to spend some time on YouTube, at least. 

Because they are so small they can (and do) take advantage of old flicker holes, and they will also use nest boxes. Here in the United States most of us have to be content with seeing them only in the winter, however, as the bulk of their breeding range is in central and western Canada, up in to Alaska. But this time of year you should be able to spot them in fresh or salt water across the entire lower 48 and down in to Mexico. In fact, I've been entertained by a number of rambunctious dinner parties in my Maine neighborhood recently, both off the coast and on inland ponds. 

It's been a while since we've been able to engage in similarly energetic human parties, but those precious gatherings will return. And when they do, I imagine they'll feel just as celebratory as a gathering of buffleheads. 

It's Finished! "Dinner Party" linocut

"Dinner Party," reduction linocut, 18" x 18"
embiggenable with a click

Holy cow, has this been a long one! Between technical difficulties and aesthetic challenges I had long weeks when I was ready to throw up my hands and go find a job that was less nerve-wracking. But it's finally done. The drying rack has been moved out of the way for the first time in two months (when I'm working on large pieces it has to occupy an inconvenient spot). Everything has been cleaned up and the studio is ready for the next project.

I'm definitely anxious to get started on something new, but have to go out of town again for a couple of days. (Reception at Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt, see previous post.) I also have an illustration project that needs some attention and this print will need several days to dry, so... some time next week the lino chips will start to fly again.

But blah blah blah... I'm sure you want PICTURES, not babbling, so here's how it ended.

The step prior to this one didn't look much different... it darkened the males a bit, darkened a few areas of water, and added yellow to the crab. It gave me palpitations, though. I tried to use a newsprint mask because I didn't want to go through the effort of removing ALL of the water from the block. WRONG! The prints were too tacky. The mask pulled up color AND stuck to the print, so out came every bit of lino except for the birds.

Here's a look at the block inked up for the very last pass: a dark, almost black, transparent gray.

It's hard to see the details of the birds in the overall shot of the print... so here they are in close-up:

 My biggest complaint about the piece at this point is that once again I've done something with way too much blue, and it's a complete pain in the neck to try to get decent photos. (The birds are still wet and I'm fighting ink glare, too.) My next piece is going to have NO blue.

Well. Maybe a little. ;-)

Thanks for sticking by me through this piece, everyone. Your encouragement and interest stamina kept me going!

Linocut in Progress: Almost there now

Aside from putting me even further behind on the current reduction linocut, my four days out of the studio last week were a good thing. Most importantly because I got to spend two of those days with friends I hadn't seen in 20 years (!!) but also because it gave me a little time away from this piece that has been making me so crazy. The solution seemed more clear when I returned, although it required revisiting some earlier work.

Mostly I decided that the lighter areas I had added back to the female birds were too light in some spots, too dark in others, and that the overall hue was too "cool." Thankfully I hadn't thrown out my inking stencil, so I could go back and adjust everything. Tedious, but necessary.

I also got brave and tackled two small areas on the male ducks that required some tricky pochoir technique.

The males, while strongly black and white, do show some iridescence in their heads. I initially left this out, but since I was working the females so much I decided I might as well give it a try. Because the males' heads were already dark I first printed small areas of white, and then applied a tiny rainbow of color over the white.

Finding the right colors took a little time, but after so much blue and brown it was nice to play with other hues. In the end I used the yellow, the light turquoise, and the dark burgundy color.

Fun, eh?

In the last two days I've fussed around with this piece so much that I have lost track of what happened, and I neglected to take photos. But once all the tweaking of duck heads was finally accomplished I hit the entire block with another transparent gray. I'm calling this Step 14, but if you count all the adjustment of little color shapes it's probably more like Step 493.

There's another little surprise in the beak of the foreground female. Yes, she's got a snack! This was part of all that shape-fussing, too. I'll bet no one will be surprised when I say that I intend for my next piece to be mostly big shapes. It probably won't happen, but I can proclaim an intention, at least.

At last I'm only two steps away from being finished and I think it's going to work. Unfortunately when I tried to print the second-to-last step this morning I discovered the prints were entirely too wet and even with a newsprint mask I was pulling ink off instead of getting it smoothly on. The end is in sight but I can't get there from here. Rats.

But there's plenty to do in the studio even when I have to wait. I have framing to do again this week and paper to tear down for upcoming prints (and images to choose for those prints), and.... you get the picture! (Even if we don't get the end of this picture just yet.)

Linocut in Progress: Still ugly

(Sigh) Sometimes I think I should take up some other occupation... like... I don't know... bottle cap collecting or something. Surely it's less stressful than printmaking.

These ducks are testing my bravery, and as a result I am procrastinating in the worst way. Or maybe I am just a great example of approach-avoidance behavior* in action. I want to finish this piece (good), but the next steps are awkward and scary (bad). I just keep walking up to the table and then away from it, afraid to take the plunge.

Step 11 wasn't so bad... it was a transparent gray applied over all the uncarved areas of the block. It unified everything as I had hoped, but it also made the female ducks a bit darker overall.

Bufflehead reduction linocut in progress Step 11

The color isn't bad... in fact I like it, but there isn't enough value contrast between the birds and the water. In particular, the head of the foreground bird is lost against the waves. I could (and probably will) darken areas of the water behind her head a bit more... but I don't think it will solve the problem.

Hm. More procrastination.

Bufflehead linocut in progress: Step 12

Yesterday I finally decided to add some lighter color back in to a few places on the female ducks' heads. I cut a stencil and did some very selective inking. The result is patchy-looking AND it's also not quite light enough. Argh. The patchiness is okay, it will be dealt with when I apply one more transparent gray layer over the entire bird, but I'm going to have to reprint a few of these lighter bits. Ugh. Fussy.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, says the procrastinator) I'm headed out of town for a few days again. I'm going to try to hit these light bits tonight before I go and then hopefully it will all be dry and ready for the final steps when I return. And maybe I'll have my courage back by then, too.

(*Wikipedia, that fountain of information that may or may not be correct, explains it this way: Approach-avoidance conflicts occur when there is one goal or event that has both positive and negative effects or characteristics that make the goal appealing and unappealing simultaneously.)