What's It All About Wednesday: Telling Fish Tales

"Telling Fish Tales," reduction linocut, © Sherrie York

It's been rainy the last couple of days here in midcoast Maine. The mainland vegetation is lush and green, but the sea reflects the overcast skies and the world seems a little muted. The ochre and rust of seaweed and the grays of granite ledges dominate the palette in Muscongus Bay.

While the humans scurry about in wellies and rain jackets, the animals carry on with business as usual.  Cormorants, comfortable in or out of the water, congregate on rocky ledges. Who knows what information they may share with each other at times like this, but I like to imagine the bird in the center talking about the fish that got away. "It was THIS BIG."

Finished. No foolin'!

"Six Cormorants and a Duck"
Can you find the duck?

The biggest prank of my first day of April was meted out by this crazy single color linocut. I mean, really. It's taking HOW long to rub a decent print?

For today I pulled just seven prints on Awagami kozo and two on Arches hot press watercolor paper. (For hand-coloring experiments.) Between the recent carving and printing marathons my wrist is just too, too tired to do much more right now.. but that's the good thing about single color! I don't HAVE to print the entire edition at once. (Although going through all the cleanup knowing I have to do it again isn't very much fun.)

But, ooh.... when you look at this, can't you just imagine a series of blended rolls under all this line work? Yeah. Later.

For the next day or two I need to turn my attention to some contract projects, and then it will be time to take a deep breath and finish the eiders. I also need to start drawing up another single color image, because it would be silly to have only one in the exhibition.  I have about three weeks left to get everything done! Yikes!

For the doubters amongst us

Avoidance of the eiders continues, so carving progresses on what I'm envisioning as both a single-color linocut and perhaps a key block for some future multi-pass experiment.

This block is a 12x12-inch square, but seems to be taking an inordinately long time to carve. Maybe it's because I'm working with texture more than shape, so it's ALL noodly. At this point it's about half carved... or we could say I've got a couple of Harry Potter movies and a Star Trek episode or two invested so far. Kind of fun, though, eh? It's the lovely assortment of cormorant postures that interested me here, and for the someday-future color version there's a great movement of color from light gray to green to dark gray, more light gray, ochre, brown as you move top to bottom.

Who knows? If I manage to print it on watercolor paper (challenging by hand) I might even add some handcoloring. But all this is completely theoretical until I finish carving, so time to get back to it!

Linocut in Progress: Or perhaps we should say FINISHED!

I was hopeful that Step 9 would be final pass for the cormorant lino, but hey. This is me we're talking about.

Cormorant linocut: Step 9

 I liked it, but felt that the sense of depth could get one more boost if I applied an additional dark to the right side of the image. (Those closest rocks.)

Last color inked.

So along came Step 10, a transparent black... just enough to goose those forward rocks into a bit more detail and bring them forward.

Cormorant linocut: Step 10

Yep. I think that pushed the birds back a skosh. That last dark looks REALLY dark in the photo, but the ink is wet and shiny and I think the camera just wants that contrast. Which suggests that getting a good shot of this piece is going to be challenging. We'll see once it's dry.

I'm considering "Telling Fish Tales" for the title... because every time I look at the interaction between the birds I can imagine the center fellow describing the one that got away. ("It was THIS big!")

I have my own story to tell with arms spread wide... mostly to accommodate the schlepping of boxes. After far too many months in limbo I finally found a place to live here in Salida... and I've spent most of this past week moving. Again. (Essentially the fourth move since October.)

Unfortunately the expense of the new space means I'll have to give up my lovely studio here and move back into 80 fewer square feet. Ooph. Gonna be tight. But I'll be happy to be all under one roof again and able to live with work in progress. Literally. It will also feel good to be unloading more extraneous stuff. I did a big purge before the first move, but since it looks like it won't have been quite big enough I can look forward to running a little leaner yet.

It will be a couple of weeks before I'm completely resettled, but knowing that the end of limbo is near helps a lot!

And never fear! I already know what the next lino will be... hoping to get it drawn up this week when I can't stand to look at another box.

Linocut in Progress: Cormorants nearing completion. Maybe.

After all that fussing around looking for the right rusty color I thought gray would be a piece of cake. Or at least a piece of soft lino. Wrong-o.

It's a nice-looking gray. Transparent. Not too blue, not too brown.

Looks nice rolled up on the block.

Assorted gray adjustments

Eek. Too green on the print! Adjust. Eek! Too light. Adjust. Eek! Too dark.

Cormorant linocut: Step 8

Finally, as Goldilocks would say. Just right.

Linocut in Progress: Emerging from the fog

I just realized that the title of this post could be applied both to this linocut-in-progress and to life in general right now. In either case, I think it's a good thing.

After the printing of the first "rock weed ochre" layer I wanted to add some depth and texture to keep it from appearing as a flat shape. Enter all the "noodly" carving of the previous post.

Cormorant linocut: Step 6

A second ochre layer definitely brought some subtle texture and interest into the scene. And now for a little drama.

Cormorant linocut: Step 7

It took a surprising amount of time to hit this color just right. Most of it will be covered up by two more gray layers, and I struggled to find a rusty color that wasn't too orange when it went down over the ochre layers. It seems a little dark here, but some of that is a function of the photo. I hope the rest will resolve with the next colors.

So now it's back to "noodly" carving and then a gray that will hopefully tie everything back together again. I'd like to print tomorrow, but if this doesn't dry enough overnight it will have to wait until Sunday. In the meantime I'm going to mount up another large-ish (12 x 18 inches) block like this one and start drawing up another print! Deadlines are looming!

Linocut in Progress: Noodly bits

Cormorant linocut: Step 5

The tide is low in the Gulf of Maine and our trio of cormorants is perched above the splash zone... soooooo.... the next color down is rockweed ochre. This required a bit more muscle than expected as the print was probably bordering on too wet. But I powered on through and they're all hanging tidily on the rack.

Cormorant linocut: Noodly little carving

Should be plenty of time for drying now... look at all the noodly bits of carving I have to do! Kind of fun, but it definitely requires a lot of getting up to wander around and look at something else to give my eyes and wrist a break. But never fear. If Annie Bissett can carve the entire text of the first page of Genesis from wood, then surely I can manage a bunch of weedy little dots in lino.

I do, however, think I require a cookie before I can go on today. Since there are none in the studio... it's time to take a walk!