Linocut in Progress: Columbine in full bloom!

Oh, you should see Maine right now! It's ridiculously green. I spent most of my life in the high desert, and while we had our verdant moments and secret pockets of rich vegetation, it wasn't anything like this overwhelming wall of... just green... that we have here in the early summer.

There's been a lot of green in the studio for the last week, also. Once I had proved that the columbine linocut didn't need to be scrapped, I was anxious to get on with it. Naturally, the faster one wants to finish the slower the ink layers dry. It's a conspiracy, I swear.

Anyway... somehow we are at Step 10, and somehow I missed taking any photos of the ink rollup. I've been trying to take photos and video throughout the development of this linocut, so I can put together a video for the team at Ann Korologos Gallery. I was supposed to be in Colorado right now, as I mentioned before, and had a demo and artist talk on the gallery schedule. It's still going to happen... but now it will be virtual!

All of which is to say that I'm guessing the ink rollup was recorded in video and not photography, so you'll just have to imagine it. It was another blended roll... a darker and bluer green blended to a  darker and more olive-y green. Like this:

Reduction linocut, Step 10 printed

At this point I was really hoping the next color pass would pull the entire thing together, but I had my doubts. The background is a wee bit boring, but I don't want to go too crazy and have it interfere with the main subjects, the twin blooms. (Oooh... maybe that will be the title! Or not.) I also want to beef up the contrast with some darker values, but I don't want to go SO dark that the flowers appear washed out again.

Ink scraps saved in wax paper

Luckily I have plenty of ink with which to search for the appropriate colors. I think I've mentioned before that one of the reasons I still like to work with oil-based inks is that I can save leftover bits of color by wrapping them in wax paper. The ink scraps will usually stay viable for several weeks this way, and I often use "leftovers" from a previous color pass as a base for mixing new colors.  For Step... hm... 11 (!!!) I started with the leftovers from Step 10 and added in some leftovers from the previous black scoter print! Because that's how I (ahem) roll. (See what I did there?)

Step 11 rollup

Step 11 printed

At this stage I put a little video clip of the reveal on my Instagram feed and asked the question, "Is it finished or is it ain't?" Most people seemed to think it was finished, but you know me! I felt it need just a little more interest in the background and some small darker bits in the stems and leaves.

Ugh. Step 12.

Back to the ink scraps to mix up this strange green-brown... very transparent.

I had to squeeze in "just one more color" of course. Step 12 ink rollup.

Yes. That's what it needed. NOW it's finished.

Columbine, reduction linocut, 6" x 8" Edition size? Probably 18, I still have to sort them.
This image is slightly embiggenable with a click.

I'm not sure what's up next in the studio. I need to take some time now to work on the video of this image, plus I still have plenty of work to do for my online course. And I need to develop a virtual field sketching class for the Farnsworth Museum. Yikes. That's a lot of a whole other kind of thinking! Best get started. 

Linocut in Progress: A near-disaster averted.

Aaaaaaaanndddd.... as anticipated, we have reached the "ugly duckling" stage of this linocut, the point at which I question every choice ever made in my entire life, especially the one that involved putting ink and paper together for a living.

There's really no good reason for this print to already be at Step 7 and only have the blooms of the flowers resolved, but that's where things stand. It's time to start thinking about stems, leaves, and the still-avoided background.

The first question to answer is "How the heck are we going to get green over all this lavender?"

Just as a reminder, here's what the last step (number 6) looked like:

Where we last left our hero: Step 6

That's a lot of lavender... and it's nice and harmonious. It's going require the serious pulling up of my Big Printmaker Pants to move on from here.

I knew whatever color I printed next would need a lot of opaque white ink in it. It's impossible to get back to "white white," even if I used straight white ink on the image, but I can at least get things moving in the right direction. I mixed up a sort of "pistachio ice cream" pale green:

Step 7 ink rollup... pale, pale green

And I got this:

Reduction linocut, Step 7

Not what you were expecting, I bet. It was sort of what I was expecting. I had hoped for a little bit lighter value, but the grayness was no surprise. Remember your basic color theory, everyone! Colors that are opposite on the color wheel (blue-orange, green-red, purple-yellow) tend to dull each other out. A yellowy green over a lavender just does what it has to. I went ahead and finished this color pass just as it was, because I couldn't really see a way to get a better solution at this point. I crossed my fingers I could fix it in the next pass.

And I did. I mixed a brighter, but still loaded with white, green for Step 8, and now things look undeniably vegetative. But there's a new problem. The flowers look SO washed out! The richness of the lavender seems to have faded away with the addition of these last two color passes.

Reduction linocut, Step 8

Yes, I admit it. I considered scrapping the entire thing at this point. Because if I have to darken the flower petals the only way to do that would be to cut a second block... and trying to match those shapes? It didn't bear thinking about.

So after a day or two of nail biting I decided I should go ahead and try one more color pass to see if I could bring the blooms back to life. If not... well... I was resigned to the need for a do-over.

Step 9 rollup

I decided that if I was potentially going to pitch the entire thing anyway I might as well go for the bold, so I mixed up a blended roll of dark-to-light (and bright!) green.

Step 9 printed

Hooray! That worked okay, didn't it? The flowers are back to their lovely lavender selves... and the background seems to at least have a direction.

And speaking of the background... there's no more time to avoid decision-making here. I would like to keep things from getting too visually complex... let the two blooms continue to be the focus. Perhaps I'll keep the upper part of the background a solid shape and muck around a bit more with the foliage in the foreground. Time to make a couple of computer printouts and get out the pencils and see what I can sort out.

Linocut in Progress: Because I don't know about you, but I could use some beauty just now

Progress, while distracted, continues in the studio. I have been hesitant to write about creative struggles when there is so much destruction going on in the world. How did we human beings get ourselves to this point? And how do we get ourselves out? So many burdens, so many problems to solve! Climate change, global pandemic, racism, violence. Isolation, fear, anger. Murder.

Like a lot of us, I have found myself swinging between cautious optimism and overwhelming despair. Between no sleep at all and a struggle to get out of bed.

I have had little enthusiasm for image-making (or much of anything else) lately, but I am thankful that printmaking is such a process. Once a critical decision is made (carve this area, mix that color ink), there are long periods of more or less mindless repetition when one is actually printing. Roll ink, register the block, print. Roll ink, register the block, print. What focus I can muster is dedicated to craft, as I strive to be as consistent and precise as possible.

And beautiful. More than ever, it feels necessary to create something beautiful. The blue columbine is a lovely wildflower, although there is a tragic and violent connection to this bloom, also. Twenty years ago, a horrific shooting took place at a high school named for this, the Colorado state flower. 

Reduction linocut, Step 4 printed

Probably somewhere in my last post I made the mad assertion that this linocut would be a simple one. I should really stop saying such things, so that we can all be surprised when it finally does happen. 'Cause it ain't gonna happen this time. Again.

Step 5 printed

Luckily I didn't have to make choices about color for these stages, only value. I added a little bit of blue to darken the lavender, but that was all.

Step 6 printed

It feels quite satisfactory at this point, very harmonious. But in the back of my mind I know that problems are brewing, because of course I need to add some greens now... and how is that going to work with such a dark lavender base in the background? I predict a few difficult stages ahead as I try to balance color and value and as I try to find the overall picture. I have no plan beyond this stage, really... I haven't considered what to do with the background or how to resolve a couple of elements that aren't visible at this stage.

All I know for sure is that I want the end product to reach for a balance of boldness and sensitivity, contrast and harmony. Which, I think, are important qualities to strive for outside the studio as well. Shall we give it a try?

Linocut in Progress: Or perhaps I should say linocut in bloom!

Blue columbine. Delicate... showy. And the quintessential symbol of summer in Colorado. I had plans to be back home in the Centennial State right now, but of course that's all been scuppered by the pandemic.

Instead I am in Maine, which is celebrating the bicentennial of its statehood this year.

There are wild columbine which grow here also, but they are the smaller red ones. Nice. But not the blues. (To be fair... these aren't open yet...)

Not being able to visit my home state right now also means I've had to postpone some artist talks and workshops and demos that were scheduled there. Disappointing on so many levels.

BUT! Through the wonders of technology, I can at least try to make up for a little of it. I decided to start a small (6 x 8-inch) linocut of columbine, AND I am making a point to document all the stages of its development with photos and video. The goal is to create a virtual demonstration that will be shared with the good folks at Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt, where I was supposed to present a program this week. In the meantime I can keep you up to date on progress, least.

To begin with, here's a drawing I made, based on some reference photos I have from... wow! More than ten years ago.

I decided that compositionally I liked the flowers facing the other way around. This will seem confusing when you look at the block, because the image has the same orientation as the drawing. But remember that it will print in reverse... so forwards is actually backwards.

I could have made this even more confusing by explaining that I first scanned the drawing into the computer and flipped it backwards so that when I printed it on paper and flipped it facedown on the lino to transfer it would come out right way around again. Which is really the wrong way. But don't worry. I won't tell you that.

Step 1! Carve away any areas to remain white, and print a lovely pale lavender-blue.

Reduction linocut, step 1, printed

Step 2! Oh, crud. Those yellow centers. Spot inking already! Oh well, at least it's a small piece and there are only two areas that need yellow. A little carving, a few newsprint masks....

Step 2, newsprint mask for spot inking

Et voila! Yellow contained and printed.

Reduction linocut, step 2, printed

That didn't take very long, so I went ahead and carved and printed for the third color pass. Another transparent blue-y lavender.

Reduction linocut, step 3, printed

As you can no doubt tell by now, I'm doing a little "frame breaking" with this composition. It's been a while since I used this particular design approach... something leftover from the days when I did a lot of page design as a paste-up artist. (Paste-up! Who remembers paste-up!?!?!)

So far things seem to be moving along nicely. I don't have any real concept of where I'm going with this once I get the blooms sorted out. In the back of my mind is the knowledge that I will want some greens in here, and I've already compromised that a bit with so much lavender.

But that's the trick with reduction printing. One needs to decide where one wants the "purest" color early on. Layering greens over this lavender-y color will mean I won't likely get "pure," bright greens. But layering the lavender over the green would have been less appealing... I'm highlighting the blooms more than their greenery, so they get priority in the order of layers.

It all sounds good in theory, but sometimes reality throws a curveball. We'll see what happens in the next few color passes!

Linocut in Progress: Wrapping up the iris

So where were we? Oh, of course. We were trying to figure out how I'd managed to put eleven color passes on this little (5x7 inches) linocut without actually resolving the image.

The answer is, of course, poor planning. Or more correctly: no planning. I was so anxious to be printing that I just dived in to a block that had been roughly drawn out probably 9 months ago... and I didn't really give any thought to the end goal.

After the last ochre-to-blue blend, which created some darker leaves in the lower part of the image and warmer tones in bases of the flowers, I finally sat back and assessed. And I wasn't particularly pleased. It just seemed too... something.

I thought perhaps I needed to do (ahem) just one more ochre-to-blue pass and create a few more details. So I did that.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 12

And I still wasn't happy. These darker bits in the flowers were now too dark and they had become quite clunky.

So I did something I rarely do. I fished out some white ink, added it to a little bit of ochre, and then added some transparent base to it. I applied this color only to a few small areas within the flowers.... et voila....

"Iris," reduction linocut, thirteenth and final color pass. ©Sherrie York

The flowers now have a better relationship to the background and everything feels a bit more harmonious.

There were many ups and downs during the printing of this linocut. This was partly due to the lack of clear planning mentioned above, but of course I was also working in a new space and new environment... and I hadn't done a reduction print in six months. Can you believe it? Neither can I. No wonder I was getting a bit cranky.

But I've definitely dusted out the cobwebs now, and hopefully the next piece will go a little more smoothly. And yes... the next piece is already underway!

Linocut in Progress: Iris

How sad is it to have my studio door open out on to such green? Not sad at all!

Wow. It's been more than six months since I've been able to start a blog post with those lovely words: linocut in progress. The cross-country shift turned out to be even more epic than I expected, but now that I'm more or less settled in one place for a while I can barely remember the hard parts. Ain't that the way it goes?

So.... without further ado... let's start figuring out the reduction linocut process in a new space and new environment. (With a recently-repaired press, to boot.)

Linocut in progress, Step 1

Among the procedures I need to sort out is a set up for photographing work in progress. I have a combination of overhead lighting and table lamps in the new space, and I still need to make some adjustments to keep the unwanted shadows to a minimum. But no matter... this first step looks like a transparent lavender rectangle because that's what it is.

A little hand-wiping for Step 2

The second color pass is another run of the transparent lavender, a little darker. I don't need or want all this purple-y business everywhere on the block, but I really wasn't ready to start up the fussy mask cutting routine again. My solution was to roll ink in the top half of the block and then use a paper towel to hand-wipe the edge and make it more interesting.

Step 2, printed

At this stage I found it so satisfying to have a drying rack full of prints again that I kept wandering in to the studio just to admire them.

But then there was a four-day riot of busy-ness: Friends arrived from Michigan for a visit; high school graduation festivities ensued for a friend's daughter, our ukulele group played a gig at the annual Ukulele Festival up in Belfast, and I met with Hog Island Audubon Camp's first Artist in Residence of the season and got her settled for her session. Whew! Oh... and there was the distraction of a snowy owl that was caught on a seabird island and had to be transported to a rehabber. But that's a whole other story.

So the prints sat for a couple of days, getting more or less dry. Drying times and paper behavior are two of the things I'm concerned about in my new environment. The Upper Arkansas Valley in Colorado, where I moved from, is high desert, with fewer than 10 inches average annual precipitation and practically non-existent humidity most of the time. Where did I move TO? The coast of Maine. This is not desert, and it does have humidity. Lots of it, some days.

To help me sort out the conditions in my new space I got a temperature and humidity gauge for the studio. It's been raining all day today, but the inside humidity level stayed at a constant 47%. I'm having a little bit of issue with paper curling, but some of that might also be coming from incorrect pressure settings. I zeroed out the press after we repaired the bed, but I need to do it again now that it's been settled in its space. I loosened the pressure a bit today and the paper seems to be behaving better.

Ahhhhhhhh! Masks already!

Remember how I said, a mere 5 paragraphs ago, that I wasn't ready to mess around with cutting masks yet?

(sigh) I lied.

I didn't want to do it, honest. But it was the best decision for the next two color passes, so I cut masks. A lot of them. I'm starting with 30 prints this time around, since I'm assuming there could be technical issues as I learn new parameters. And naturally I needed this same mask for two different color passes.

Both Step 3 and Step 4 utilized a transparent ultramarine blue.

Here's the mask in place, ready to print.

Newsprint mask in place, Step 3

And here's color pass number three printed. The resulting color looks quite purple, which is not surprising given the lavender ink underneath.

Step 3 printed

More masks, more blue ink. Step 4:

Step 4 printed

I expect I'll need to leave these to sit now for a day or two, especially since it's going to continue raining. Most of the flower shapes will be carved away at this point, and then work will begin on stems, leaves, and background. Despite the fact this block has been drawn up since before I left Colorado I don't really have a plan for what will happen from this point on... so a day to consider where this is headed is probably a good thing.

Being able to write a work-in-progress post is one more indication of a return to what passes for normal in my world. Thanks for waiting so patiently to join me again on the printmaking rollercoaster!

Linocut in Progress: It's Done! I think.

Alright. Let's just wrap up this current linocut, shall we? It's time to start thinking about a new piece.

Step 11: I hit the whole block with another transparent blue-to-brown blend.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 11

It seemed close to finished at this stage, but I didn't like that the background color seemed to divide straight across the horizontal center of the image. It felt... ungraceful. And I wanted just a wee bit more dark.

Much hemming and hawing ensued, and then much carving, and then.... much color mixing.

The final color. Finally.

Some days I can hit the right combination of hue and transparency quickly and everything moves ahead smoothly. SOME days, however, are like today. It probably took me close to an hour to get this color right. I started with scraps of the previous blues and browns and made what I thought was the perfect sort of licorice green. (LOTR fans: the color of Aragorn's coat.)

Nope. Too transparent.

I added some blue. Too blue! I added some black and then printed. Too dark! I took part of the too-dark color and added it to transparent base. Close, but too black. More green. More blue. Print. Tweak the color again. Argh!

Eventually I hit on this rich blue-green-black color and just the right amount of transparency. Unfortunately that big blob in the foreground of the photo is the wrong color... and I've got a lot of it. But perhaps I'll find a place for it in another print.

In the meantime... finished.

Step 12, final. As-yet-untitled reduction linocut, 12" x 12"

Of course, I'm discovering that greens are just as annoying to photograph as blues, but this shot is fairly close. Embiggenable with a click, and ready to find a title. Whew!

Linocut in Progress: Backwards and forwards

It's been nearly a week since the debacle of too-wet ink forced me to abandon work on the current lino. Every day since then I have checked the status of the ink and found to my frustration that the problem continued– but only on one side of the print! The previous color pass was a blended roll of transparent blue to brown, and for reasons I can't quite figure out the brown dried much faster than the blue!

I've not run in to such an extreme case of uneven drying time before, but I decided today that I'd had enough! The upper half of the image was still very tacky, but the lower half was dry. Fine. Time to move ahead no matter what.

Spot inking, pale yellow

I mixed a pale yellow ink (mostly white with a little Hansa yellow medium) and spot-inked the flower centers. I covered the block with a newsprint mask as before, then printed.

Mask clinging to the print after a trip through the press

The mask often clings to the print after it's been run through the press. Sometimes it's just static electricity, others it's a slight tack left in the previous layers of ink. This time....

You can see that the mask isn't sticking at all to the lower half of the image, but it is still stripping ink from the top half! Crazy. But I decided to just go with it.

Linocut in progress, Step 9

Here are the lighter flower centers, the intact darker green on the bottom, and the stripped upper color. Yep. The upper half of the image took a step backward and the lower half went forward. Fine. I'll just work from this.

Linocut in progress, Step 10 (this image is embiggenable with a click)

After some more carving I put together another transparent blue-to-brown blended roll. Printing went smoothly, and I feel like everything is more or less back on track now.

I'm envisioning two more color passes before it's finished, with a good bit of carving to do before I'm back to the press. I'm a little nervous that the last color pass might involve another mask... but hopefully between now and then either the ink will dry or I'll come up with a better solution. Onward through the fog! Er... foliage.

Linocut in Progress: Technical difficulties, please stand by

The best laid plans... and all that.

After Step 7 I plowed on ahead with another blended color pass on the current lino in progress. This pass was a transparent blue-to-brown, but of course it all still looks rather green. I do like the more olive-y tones that the brown created, however.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 8

The layers of value in the leaves are looking good, but at this point I realized I had forgotten the step that I meant to do when I first returned to this piece after a long time away. Dangit.

The flower centers had all become too dark too fast, and I meant to address this before moving on by doing a bit of spot inking. Well, more than a bit of spot inking-- there are a lot of flower centers in this image! I suspect I blocked it from my memory because I knew what a pain it would be to cut a mask.

Spot inking, step 9

With no small amount of grumbling I cut the mask(s) and spot inked all the flower centers with white. (Knowing that the end color won't look white because of the colors below it.)

Here's the mask in place on the inked block, ready to receive the print.

Mask in place

The prints on the drying rack all seemed tackier than I expected after sitting for a few days, but I pulled out one of the "tester" prints and ran it through the press.

Disaster.

See the extent of the disaster by embiggening this image with a click.

The print on the left is where the image stood at the end of Step 8. The print on the right is one that had spot inking and the mask applied. Sure, the lighter centers came out okay, but the mask pulled up almost all of the previous color pass!

Yep. Everything is far too wet to go on.

I was surprised by this, but probably shouldn't have been. Our weather has been unusually cool and damp, which slows down the drying time... but I think the problem is deeper than that. Remember I was worried about ink rejection because Steps 1-6 were so dry? I'm just guessing, but I think the über-dry first steps have created a sort of "seal" on the paper, a barrier that's keeping air from these new layers and not allowing them to dry.

So. I'm afraid my goal of finishing this piece in the next week will have to be adjusted. Possibly a lot. It's too late to add any cobalt drier to the inks... and I hate to do that, anyway. Cobalt drier is nasty stuff, a known carcinogen, plus I hate what it does to the sheen of the ink. So I'm just going to have to wait for the prints to be ready in their own time.

Rather than come to a complete standstill, I spent the afternoon working through some ideas for another print to start. Nothing is leaping up to say "pick me, pick me" just yet, but it will. And doing something... anything... is better than sitting around and watching ink dry!

Linocut in Progress: Picking up where I left off

My two months in New England zoomed by at the speed of light, but this week I returned home to my studio and zoomed right back to work on the linocut that was in progress before I left.

Just as a reminder, here's where the print was at the end of May:

When we last left our hero: Step 6

Settling back down to carve for the next color pass was relatively straightforward, but I did have a little trepidation when it came time to print again. After hanging on the rack for two months the prints were VERY dry, which could have caused some issues. Paper shrinkage, and therefore registration problems, and poor adhesion of new ink layers were two possibilities that sprang immediately to mind.

At the end of my last print session (in May) I folded leftover ink into wax paper and tucked it away. I was pleasantly surprised to find both little packets still viable, so the colors from Step 6 became the base for the next pass.

Wheeeeeeee! Rainbow roll!

This green-to-blue-to-green blended roll looks quite dramatic on the block, but both colors were very transparent. Thankfully I had absolutely no issues with ink or registration, and subtle complexities of foliage started to develop.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 7

It's all looking rather alarmingly green now, so it's time to sit back and assess what needs to happen next. My inclination is to try to moderate some of the brightness, so maybe I'll try something crazy like a transparent red layer over the entire block! Or not.

It feels good to be back to work... and I'm even happy to have a little ink under my fingernails. Onward!