Linocut in Progress: Finishing the eiders

Alrighty, then! In the space of 48 hours both my quest for a new car and my quest to finish the eider linocut were resolved. More or less. There remains the obligatory shuffling of papers for the car and the equally obligatory shuffling to find a title for the image, but at least things have moved on to a new stage.

Step 10... AKA the expected-to-be-final-but-then-alas-not-quite-final step. I mixed a bit of sepia into all my scraps of greenish and ochre-ish brown ink and rolled the resulting deep brown across the entire block. 

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 10 rollup

The result was good, but not exactly right...

Step 10 printed

...which meant there was one more pass to go. I'm sorry to admit I didn't take a photo of the last ink rollup, but here's the carved block after I had finished printing.

Final carving stage

The birds' heads and backs have been mostly carved away, as well as swathes of rock weed in areas that are shadowed, but not completely so. It seems like there's a lot of material still left on the block after 11 stages, but believe me, a lot has been carved away. It's just been in tiny bits at a time.

The final color was the previous brown with a good amount of Prussian blue mixed in to give it a coolness that seemed appropriate for the deeper shadows.

And... heeeeeeeere's the final image. (This is a scan rather than a photograph, so the colors are closer to correct. The photos always seem to be a bit lurid.)

As-yet-untitled reduction linocut, 12" x 12"

All that remains is to find a title for it. Female eiders camouflaged out in the open are a common sight here in Maine. The birds are similar in color to the rock weed that is exposed at low tide... its slippery fronds making it treacherous for human beings and other predators to traverse the rocky shore. Lingering at Low Tide? Perhaps. 

I've already got another large-ish lino in the long, skinny format drawn up, but it might be time for me to tackle some smaller images. I am undecided. What I DO know is next on the horizon is finally pulling together my online Learn Linocut course! I've promised my producer than I'll have the written portion...well... written... in the next couple of weeks, and final feedback on the video portion. The goal is to have everything ready before the holidays... so if you know someone who wants to learn the process I should have at least some of your holiday shopping solved for you! 

Linocut in Progress: Slowly

Of all the headaches associated with this, the weirdest year ever, the one that has been depriving me of the most sleep (lately) is the ongoing quest for a new (to me) car. My current ride is 23 years old... going on 24. While it was never a practical vehicle for me in terms of cargo space (it's a sedan... not convenient for hauling around art), it has been completely reliable. The engine still wants to go, but after 200,000 miles everything else is wearing out. 

I started looking for a replacement in February, but then of course everything shut down for a couple of months. When I started looking again in May I found few vehicles available and prices elevated (as they have become with just about everything). I can't tell you how many hours of my life have been lost to car hunting and research... online... driving around. There have been a couple of vehicles that looked promising but in the end were disappointing... with entire days lost to driving back and forth. 

The search has reached critical stage... and it's occupying most of my brain cells... so it's been really hard to find momentum in the studio. But I did get another color pass down this week, and I think there's just one... maybe two... more to go.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 9 ink roll up

Everything about this piece has seemed strange. The color palette, the time it's taking, my distracted attention. After the last color pass I really started to worry that the whole thing was going to fall apart, so my goal for this step was to try to create a bit more cohesion. I mixed up two rather odd inks... a greeny-brown and a reddish-brown. The red-brown was used somewhat loosely across the birds, and the rest of the block was inked with the green-brown. Both colors were very transparent, so they reacted with all the colors printed below them.

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 9 printed

Oooookay..... That feels better. Hard to say if I will be able to resolve it all in one more color pass, but that's the goal! 

Linocut in Progress: Still in the ugly zone....

Is it just me, or have all the social media platforms decided to change their interfaces at the same time? Blogger, Facebook, Instagram. It seems as though they've all moved the controls, changed the appearance, and simultaneously conspired to cause user irritation. 

Maybe I'm just being ultra-sensitive, because if you follow me on either FB or IG, you know that last week some nefarious human being created an Instagram account impersonating me and subsequently spammed many of my followers. It caused no end of headaches, since it is impossible to reach a real human being at any of these companies anymore. I don't want to rattle on about it, but as a public service announcement I just want to say BE CAREFUL OUT THERE. I never send my readers any private messages asking them to follow links or donate any funds, and I immediately delete messages I receive under the same circumstances. Stay vigilant! 

But enough of the soapbox, let's talk lino. 

There have been a lot of distractions in the last couple of weeks. Between the IG woes, an online course, and a live workshop (my first since last autumn!) studio time has been erratic. But then again, so am I right now. Erratic, I mean. 

So where are we?

Right. We're at Step 6 already! There are four subtle layers of color in the background water area, and in my last post the print had just entered the Ugly Duckling Stage with the application of Step 5. I'm afraid we're going to be in this questionable stage for a while longer, so I hope you've got plenty of popcorn and don't mind a cliffhanger.

Step 6 was a straightforward orangey-ochre applied to over the entire block. It went a little way towards unifying some of the blobbiness that started to appear in Step 5, but not much.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 6 printed

The seaweeds which cover the intertidal zone all along the Maine coast range in color from a sort of orangey-ochre to an ochery-green to a blue-gray and a green that's almost black. I find these colors really tricky to mix effectively, especially when I'm layering transparent color.

For the next color I mixed a fairly dark, transparent green-black. I wanted to dull some of the rusty orange from the previous pass, and "cool" it down a bit, without getting too dark.

Step 7 ink rollup

The tricky bit is trying to anticipate how colors will interact. On the block this color looked very dark and gray, but on the print.....

It produced a rather nice brown.

Step 7 printed

In general this is all feeling okayyyyyyy..... but I don't like how dark the birds' heads have become. And I want to start developing some of the cooler-toned rockweed that's mixed in with the more ochery bits.

This looks like a job for SOOP-er Weird Color Woman.

How about we roll some plain opaque white over the upper parts of the birds and a nice, somewhat opaque, blue-gray over everything else? That ought to do... something. Right?

Step 8 rollup: Spot ink white and blue-gray

Well. It's definitely done... something.

Welcome to the Ugly Duckling Stage, Part 2.

Step 8 printed. Hmmm.

Believe it or not, I'm actually not panicking at this point, although maybe I should be. There's a bit of wet ink glare in this photo, so it's hard to tell, but I am happier with the birds' heads. Not much of the gray color will remain in the final image, I don't think.... but it has put down an interesting base and will create some nice highlights in the darker rockweed to come. Well, that's the theory, anyway!

Linocut in Progress: Ugly duckling stage already?

Alrighty, then. What the heck is going on in the studio? Stuff. That's what's going on. Linocut stuff. Whether's it's good stuff or bad stuff, I can't really tell yet, because, yes, Virginia, there is an Ugly Duckling Stage (henceforth known as the UDS), and we are in it.

But let's see what happened right up to the time of entering the UDS, shall we?

There was still a little work to be done in the background, which, as you might have guessed, is the watery region of this image. For this last bit I rolled up a transparent blue and a teal-y color to create a subtle blended roll.

Color rollup for Step 4: transparent blues and greens

With three layers of ink already on the print, it was important to think about minimizing the impact of additional bluey/greeny colors where I didn't need them, so for this pass I cut a newsprint mask to cover the foreground subjects and keep that area of the print clear.

Like this:

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 4 printed

Yes, indeed, those are silhouettes of bird shapes against the watery horizon. They have a little bit of a dark halo around them because the newsprint masks weren't spot-on, but it's okay because the next color pass will cover all that up with an opaque white. The new white won't look bright and pristine, but I am only aiming to lighten the overall value in the birds and combat the cool undertones. The real business that's getting started now is the foreground: rocks, barnacles, and rockweed. The rockweed's underlying color is a warm yellow ochre, so I'll blend that with the white to create a nice transition. I hope.

Step 5 ink rollup, white to ocher

Aaaaannnndddddd........ Here we are, squarely in the UDS. (That's Ugly Duckling Stage, if you've forgotten already.)

Linocut in progress, Step 5 printed

I should probably note that in addition to a rather unsightly collection of colors, there were also some printing issues with this particular sheet. This was the first or second print at this stage, and I was having a little trouble with both press pressure and amount of ink on the block. Things evened out after this, but of course I neglected to stop and take a photo.

At any rate... I'm now committed to a tangle of vegetation and birds, so the next carving stages will be slow and complex. Fingers crossed I can find my way back to some harmony by the time I reach the end, because right now things look rather.... well.... Ugly. Ducklings not required.

Linocut in Progress: It's all heating up...

And I mean that quite literally. It is HOT here on the coast of Maine just now-- the kind of heat that makes this formerly-of-the-high-desert printmaker wonder what she was thinking when she moved to a place where 90-degree temps can be accompanied by equally high humidity levels. To make matters worse... it just doesn't cool down at night. Back in Colorado we might have 100-degree days, but at least I could always be sure that once it got dark I could cool the house down and be ready to meet the next day's onslaught.

Here? Not so much. And I am cranky.

But I'm trying to work, despite doubts about how ink and paper behave in these conditions. It's slow going, since I frequently have to stop to wring myself out, but at least I'm trying!

I'm back to a square format for this piece; and although it will have a few of my usual subject elements (birds and water, of course), there will be a twist of complexity in the foreground that I am both intrigued by and nervous about.

But to get started, here's a soft blue in the background.... not over the entire block, it's not needed everywhere.

Linocut in Progress, Step 1

Not much information there, but that's okay. Let's try to keep some suspense going for a while. 

The second color pass was a blue-to-green blended roll, again just in the upper half of the image.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 2

It was all feeling fine at this point, but I started arguing with myself about whether or not I should be masking color out of the foreground, since the color temperature of the bottom two-thirds of the image will be much warmer than all the color that's been printed so far. My concern is with the interaction and influence of the already-printed color and the color-to-come, but I am too hot to think clearly and my brain cells are dripping down my back along with the rest of me. 

It is, however, quite satisfying to see my studio look as though there is something happening in it again. And look above my drawing/carving table! Can you see that all my carving tools are now in a nifty little rack attached to my shelf? You can thank my friend and neighbor, J, who has a lovely habit of taking an idea vaguely described by me and making it appear as if by magic.

Studio view... so nice to be working, even if I'm melting
and the paper is curling.

Sooo.... studio view and sweltering heat aside, I think I can manage one more color pass for the upper third of the image. This time it's a sort of gray-blue to lavender-blue blend... and, surprise! Some of the subjects are starting to be revealed.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 3

It's time to make yet another pitcher of iced tea and check on the status of the ice cube trays, and then it's back to the carving table. 

Linocut in Progress: Finishing the eiders!

"Tandem" - reduction linocut - 8" x 10"

Shirtsleeves weather yesterday, rain and snow today... time to finish the eiders. There wasn't much left on the  lino block at this point, just the border and the wings, tail, and head of the male.

You'll see that there is a small portion of the female's body remaining. I did a little experiment with some extra dark in this area, and it was interesting, but the black was overbearing. I could have mixed a second, lighter color to print just in the female, but decided that some self restraint was in order. Have to draw the line somewhere.

While the eiders are drying I'm sorting and signing prints and organizing things for the trip to the framer tomorrow. And thinking about the demo I have scheduled at Abend Gallery in Denver next weekend.

And despite the fact that I am REALLY ready to move on to a new subject, I am drawing up one more seabird piece to use as my demo. Yesterday's sorting and prep work confirmed the niggling feeling that there just aren't enough birds in flight in this collection. I had hoped to create either puffin or guillemot flighted pieces, but all of my reference shots and sketches from my day on Eastern Egg Rock were of birds flying away from me. Compositions of bird butts can be amusing, but I just wasn't feeling it.

So a pair of terns it will be. Simple... maybe six color passes. No time for more than that! (Well, actually not even time for that many... but I'm going to do it anyway. ;-)

Linocut in Progress: The eiders - So close and yet so far

Ooph. I don't know when I might learn to leave well enough alone. Probably never. I should stop pretending it's even a possibility.

I finally drummed up the courage to do some tweaking of the female eider, a decision I don't really regret except for the extra time and aggravation that ensued at a time when efficiency was preferred.

Eider linocut: Step 10

A lighter brown in her head and across her back. It looks like a lot more here, but we're facing some wet ink glare.

Eider linocut: Step 11

And then the birder in me decided that I should really give her the appropriate grayish beak and lighter tail feathers. Fine. Good. It looks scary, but the next color should make everything all better. A transparent gray over the entire block.

Hm. Too wet. That's okay, I'll do it tomorrow.

Hm. Too wet. I'll wait another day.

Hm. Still too wet. @#$% white ink added to lighter color must be slowing everything down. Wait some more.

I started and stopped the gray pass three times, but finally have accomplished it. Just the black to go now, but of course everything's too wet. Again.

Eider linocut: Step 12

We'll call the female finished at this stage. Overall the piece is okay as it is, but I think one more dark in the male will really finish it off. 

I think I have time to do just one more black and white piece and then we'll call the exhibition done. There are a dozen more ideas I'd like to pursue, but time is just about up.

Linocut in Progress: The eiders get scary

Lately there's been a lot of muttering on this blog about making decisions via The Avoidance Method. One would think that since it's a technique I use frequently it must have some sort of value.

One would be mistaken.  I started work on this eider linocut in order to avoid making decisions about the puffin piece... and then found myself smack up against troublesome indecision again. Nothing like Avoidance-Times-Two to make one think about starting a third piece.

Which, okay, I confess, I'm drawing up now.

In the meantime, things have gotten dicey in the eider department. I carved some more pattern into the water and printed that bright-to-dark blue roll again. 

Eider linocut: Step 7

Looking good, feeling good about it. And then the trouble started. (Go ahead guys, insert some comment about trouble-making females here, 'cause that's who's causing the grief.)

The female Atlantic eiders can have a bit more "rusty" tone to some of their plumage than their western counterparts.... so I messed around until I found a color that looks VERY orange on the block, but not so much when printed over blue.

Eider linocut: Step 8

It seemed a little dark, but I planned on a second, darker brown and a black yet to go, so wasn't too worried. I have a tendency to under-estimate value rather than over-estimate.

Or at least I did until now.

Eider linocut: Step 9

I had planned on just two steps after this... a transparent blue to add some shadows to the female and then the blacks in the male bird. But I'm worried that the hen is just too dark overall... so I'm going to attempt to bring this all around by adding a lighter color over the dark on her back. I'm not at all certain this will work... but desperation being nine-tenths of the law (or something like that).. I'll have to give it a try.

So while I'm waiting for ink to dry and my courage to return I've started drawing up another block. I'm running out of time to do any more reduction prints before the deadline for the Maine exhibition, so I think I'll be returning to my roots for this one: Single color!

WHAT?!?! Maybe handpainted with watercolor, maybe not. I'm still working out the composition. (More birds and rocks, what a surprise.) But as I'm drawing up the block I'm finding it a nice break to work without the specter of color decisions looming in the background. At least it's nice until I start thinking about how cool a green-to-ochre blend would be in this area... and a multi-gray blend here.... and OOOH... what about the sky......????

Linocut in Progress: The eiders emerge

I did get the next color down on the puffin piece, but it was such an ordeal that I haven't been back to look at it since I finished yesterday, so no photo yet. In the meantime, work on the (smaller, more manageable) eider linocut moves forward nicely.

Eider linocut: Step 5

The flat light blue of the previous pass was only to provide some shadowing in the male bird, so after just a wee bit of carving I was able to add this slight blend of blues... medium to dark to medium again. The female in the background remains very cryptic, but I think we'll start to get a feel for her in the next pass.

Eider linocut: Step 6

And there she is! Another slightly variegated ink rollup... this time a brighter blue on top and more gray-blue towards the bottom.

I'm pausing now to contemplate whether I want to add another layer of color in the background or leave it subtle like this. After that it should be just two browns, mostly in the female, and a black for the darkest bits of the male.

Linocut in Progress: Distracted by mystery bird

Clearly I'm feeling stalled on the puffin linocut... Or rather I feel like I'm pacing back and forth on the edge of a cliff, trying to decide whether or not to jump off!

My solution to indecision is, of course, to distract myself with another print.

Stuart B. wins the bird ID quiz... this is, indeed, destined to highlight the common eider. To my mind it's the shape of the bill that gives it away, but then I've been looking at a lot of eiders lately. Not live ones, sadly, as I live far from their usual haunts. But once upon a time I was on the Isle of May (Scotland) in spring, surrounded by the sweet sounds of eiders wooing. When I was back on the mainland (granted, a bigger island)... I felt bereft without their calls.

Nostalgia aside, some quick progress has been made.

Eider linocut - Step 2

Difficult to tell here, but a second spot-inked yellow followed the first. This will be more clear when other colors arrive, I think.

And then a lovely pale green. (More spot inking.)

Eider linocut - Step 3

Really difficult to tell what's going on here, isn't it? The shapes seem odd and disjointed. Time to fix that with an overall transparent blue.

Eider linocut - Step 4

NOW there's an eider! And surprise! There's a second bird here, too.