Well! It's finally happening. I am up to my ears in UNPACKING! A place to settle here in Maine has finally materialized and I'm hard at work getting myself shifted to the new digs. Moving the studio will be a bit protracted, as it's going to take a little engineering to get the press in to its new rural location. But once I'm up and running it's going to be great.
In the meantime, I'm off tomorrow to hang a show at the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge visitor center in Rockland. Show opens Friday, May 4, with a reception from 5-8 pm, part of the First Friday Art Walk. Hope to see you there!
Birders use the term “life bird” to describe their first
encounter with a species that's new to them. (There are also year
birds and state birds and county birds and yard birds and, well... you get
the picture.)
My lifer northern gannets were spotted almost 20 years ago in the Firth of
Forth, off the coast of Scotland. I was in a little crab boat, headed
for the Isle of May Wildlife Sanctuary, five miles from the mainland.
The weather was wet and windy; our boat crossing was a bit rambunctious and our landing particularly sketchy. But my strongest memory of that adventure was a sudden
splash off the port side, which turned out to be not a compatriot tumbling overboard, but a diving gannet. Several more birds plummeted into the sea around us while I stood there gaping at the spectacle.
Not far from the Isle of May is the Bass Rock, breeding ground for 150,000 northern gannets. On this side of the Atlantic, the largest colony is at Bonaventure Island, Canada, but I've caught glimpses of one or two individuals in the Gulf of Maine. Thousands of gannets pass the Schoodic Peninsula near Acadia National Park in the autumn, headed to southern waters for the winter.
My own experience wasn't nearly as dramatic as this clip from Nature's Great Events with David Attenborough, but it was memorable nonetheless. (The footage is spectacular, but be advised that it ends on a somber note.)
As subject matter for prints and drawings I find gannets extremely challenging. The shape of the head alone has given me hours of consternation. But when I think about gannets I think of the word wild: They are at home in wind and waves; they raise their young in huge breeding colonies on rocky cliffs. The surprising and strange aerodynamic shape of their wings, folded back for dives of heart-stopping intensity, seems otherworldly (and distinctly uncomfortable). What better inspiration could there be for a linocut than the memory and mystery of these Wave Runners?
It's a small fix, and I'm not completely satisfied with it, but at least I don't feel like I've left something undone now.
The top bird's lower wing.. the primary coverts were a single flat (too dark) color because I forgot to carve out the lighter bits WAY early on. After several (lousy) attempts I finally hit on a light color to add back and break up the solid shape without looking too clunky.
So... what's next? I'm not entirely sure... I have ducks and sparrows and a landscape in the queue.... Time to go shuffle images around and see what clamors loudest for my attention.
I was feeling reasonably confident about the gannet linocut after the last pass... and then I discovered a rather large-ish mistake. I'm not going to point it out yet because I still need to come up with a solution for it. But I will. I hope.
Instead of freaking out entirely I decided to go ahead and finish the background. I rolled up this nice blue-to-greenish blend, with a second brayer employed to roll solid dark at the bottom of the block, since I don't own a 12"-wide roller. Yet.
Pretty, huh?
And heeerrrrreeee's the result. Wahoo! It was another one of those happy-to-be-a-printmaker moments.
Steps 10 and 11
There was only one more color to go and I was impatient to see what it would look like, so I threw caution to the wind and printed one.
Steps 11 and 12
Actually, I printed three: two on sheets that are already discards and one on a "good" print. I'm satisfied, but they are all really too wet to carry on, so I'll wait a day or two before finishing the edition. In the meantime I'll be working out a fix for the error section.
So far this linocut has followed a more-or-less straightforward image development: White birds with shadows. But now it's time to come to terms with the background. In a perfect world these striking seabirds will be flying across a suggestion of dark ocean waves, but I have only a vague idea of how to make this work.
Obviously the next step is to add ochre, lavender, and green where the dark blue water will go. Don't you think?
Steps 7 and 8
This had to be done in two stages because I don't have a single roller wide enough to manage the 12" height of the square background all in one pass.
Step 8 and 9
For some reason these two steps made me really happy to be a printmaker. Some moments are just like that. Roll out the ink, rub the print, lift the paper– instant cheer. When it works, anyway.
So now what? As I mentioned, I'm aiming for a suggestion of dark waves behind the birds. These three colors will only show in very small areas, but I wanted to be sure the overall background wasn't just a flat, boring blue. After another carving session I inked up the block with a lavender-to-blue blend and crossed my fingers.
Steps 9 and 10. A bit embiggenable if you care to click the image.
Well, whaddaya know? This might work. I have a chunk of carving to do and then another, darker blue in the background. Depending on how that goes it's possible there will be just one more pass for the finish: wingtips, faces, and a border.
When last we left our linocut-in-progress we had a sense of northern gannets in a gray background. Like this:
Step 5
The underwing shadows in the foreground bird needed a little more oomph, so on went another grayish layer.
Steps 5 and 6 together
It doesn't seem like much, but it helped give some dimension to the critter in question.
Step 6
In fact, it might have been a little TOO much in the foreground bird's upper wing. I decided the big dark shape was too flat, but what to do about it? I fussed around with several possibilities and in the end opted to make just a small transition between the "wingpit" and the secondary feathers. I cut another mask to make certain my ink only went where I wanted it.
Why, yes... this ink IS lighter than the last pass. A case of having to think inside-out... this time carving away what I wanted to remain the dark already printed.
Step 7
The difference is small, but enough that I don't feel distracted by that big shape.
With all the brightest whites established in the first pass of this new linocut, I turned my attention to some details of the birds' heads. After taking so long to get to the details of the coot in the previous piece it's nice to get some personality established early in this one, although the final blacks of wingtips, eyes, and bills won't happen until the very end once again.
Step 2
Northern gannets have a beautiful yellow/pale ochre tint to their head feathers, so I tackled that next. The two small areas of the block were inked with a 1-inch-wide brayer and an acetate mask.
A wee bit more carving and a second, slightly darker ochre was applied using the same mask and 1-inch brayer.
Step 3
Okay, good. And now... the gannets' bills needed to be a wee bit more blue than the color that went down on the first pass. I cut a second mask and employed the 1-inch brayer one more time.
Step 4
Enough with the baby steps! After another good carving session it was time for the next tone in the underwings of both birds.
Step 5
Five colors done and I'm feeling pretty good so far. Of course, I'm starting to realize that I haven't really come to terms with what the background will be. Dark. Blues. Wave-ish. Hm. Better start applying some brain cells to the problem.
It's the funniest thing: ordinarily a 12 x 16-inch lino block would feel large to me, but after a couple of weeks with a block that was 32 inches wide, this feels like nothing much at all.
No point in trying to keep the identity of this subject a secret, since northern gannets are big, white birds and all the white had to come out of the block first thing. I'm already worried that the shadow across the belly of the foreground bird is too dark, but since the background is going to be very dark, it seemed prudent to start a little strong. We'll find out, won't we?
