Back to the Laughing Gulls: To Sea or Not to Sea.... that is the question!

Work continues on the little puffin, but while I wait for ink to dry I decided to take another look at the laughing gull linocut.

In my original design I had these birds sharing a joke on a rock in the Gulf of Maine because that IS, after all, where they are. But as work continued on the piece I thought it might be getting too "busy," so I ignored that upper corner.

I had lots of technical problems with this piece, so I have plenty of rejects to play with before I give up on an edition. Today I pulled one of those rejects out and ran a bright blue just to see what it would look like.

To sea or not to sea? Click to embiggen and help me decide!

Hm. Okay. What do you think? If I DO use the blue, I would probably add a second, subtle tone just to keep it from being a flat shape. Too much? Or just what the jokesters ordered?

Linocut in progress: Laughing gull end game. Or is it?

This computer-and-internet-only-at-the-studio thing is a little inconvenient! I fall behind on blog posts because at the end of a printing day I'm hungry and want to go home for supper. Like now. So don't expect insightful commentary– I have curry waiting.

Anyway. Where were we?

Laughing gull linocut: Step 13

Oh right. I followed the questionable yellow with an equally questionable green.

Laughing gull linocut: Step 14

And then a second, slightly less questionable but still not quite what I wanted green.

Laughing gull linocut: Step 15

Finally, a pass of transparent gray to push the bottoms of the plants down behind the rocks. Better.

Laughing gull linocut: Step 16

And then the final black in the birds. I really wanted to fuss with the greens some more, but at this point the ink is on too thick for me to have much success hand-rubbing. I could call this done.... except....

In my original design there's a triangle of blue in the upper left of the image. The sea! These birds are telling jokes on an island in the Gulf of Maine, after all. But I've been afraid of that corner and ignored it all this time. I have three or four known rejects in the edition... bad register or a tear in the paper... so I'll pull those out and mess around with the idea.

But until my courage returns I can't sit around twiddling my thumbs, so I started a new little piece today. My drying rack is happily full of laughing gulls and a seabird-to-be-named-later! Time for curry!

Linocut in Progress: Laughing gulls continue

Well... THAT week got away from me. I had a little "studio warming" party here yesterday and everything just sort of built to that end. But progress continues on the laughing gulls.

Laughing gull linocut: Step 10

Here our mirthful pair started to find themselves in a habitat. This pass was an ochre-to-brown blended roll. I'm struggling with some ink rejection here... a function, I think, of mis-judged drying times in the new space.

It's REALLY warm in here. The building has radiant in-floor heat and is kept at a constant temperature which exceeds that of my former home studio. (In fact, it exceeds the temperature of any place I've lived or worked EVER. I am a cheapskate when it comes to the thermostat.) In addition, my lovely studio window faces south, which in the High Rockies winter means acute passive solar gain.

I'm accustomed to things really slowing down once I get past 3 or 4 color passes and I wanted to move this piece along, so I did something I don't usually do. I added a little cobalt drier to my inks.

Bad move, I think. The next day everything was TOO dry.

Laughing gull linocut: Step 11

So. The blue ink that followed for the shadow contained a judicious amount of Setswell compound to loosen the ink and help even out the coverage. Better. But it took a LOT of spoon-rubbing. And I had to keep my window open to keep myself from over-heating.

Laughing gull linocut: Step 12

Hm. Not too sure about this yellow. It makes the shadow blue look REALLY blue. But most of it will get covered up in subsequent passes, so I'm hopeful that it will all work out. Experiment and learning is the name of the game, after all... especially when trying to understand a new work space!