Linocut in Progress: Zoom Out!

After fussing about with the little shapes of bright color in the birds' beaks for a couple of days, it was time to zoom back out and start tying things together across the entire image. There's more work to be done in the water before I can tackle the final details of the birds, and it's an interesting challenge to try to balance the values.

Here's the Step 6 ink rollup, a nice blue-green-gray. (Yes, that's the technical name for this color.)

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 6 rollup

(I do love when I get to use my nice 8" Takach roller, rather than muck about with little 1" brayers.)

And here's the print at this stage:

Step 6 printed

Okay. This seems to be more or less on track, although I know that at this point I really started agonizing over how dark to make some of the shapes in the water. Directly below the birds they will be reflecting some of the black of the birds' bodies... but I don't want those shapes to draw too much attention and look like they are just cut out and slapped on. 

All of which is to say that I'm at the thinking-takes-as-much-or-more-time-than-the actual-doing stage of this linocut.

What I apparently thought (according to the next photos in the chronology) was that the whole thing could use another dark.

Step 7 rollup

What I ALSO thought was that the tips of the birds' beaks still needed one more tiny bit of light color on them, but I didn't want to cut another mask and set up a whole color run just to make three tiny shapes. Instead I inked the entire block, and then used a shop towel to wipe the color off the beaks before printing.

 Did it take more or less time than cutting a mask and making a color pass for these tiny shapes? Probably six of one, half a dozen of the other. But the chances are greater for the registration to slip when there's only a tiny bit of ink on the block, so this seemed like the best solution while I thought about how to deal with these little shapes.

And after printing they looked like this:

Step 7 printed

Is the water mostly done now? Hm. Not quite, I don't think. And At this stage I realized I had been neglecting the issue of the one female bird in the image, who looks significantly different from her escorts. That situation will need to be addressed, stat.

Linocut in Progress: It's the little things

Well, I dropped the ball on narrating the progress of the scoter linocut, so let's see if I can reconstruct the steps based on photos.

For Step 4 I needed to do some spot inking to get the crazy color of the male birds' beaks going, plus small bits that will be reflected in the water. The best way to contain this was to cut some newsprint masks.

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 4 mask

Masks cut... time to roll out some ink! For those who might not be familiar with Atlantic sea ducks, these are Surf Scoters– another species invented for printmakers, because the beaks of the male birds are just ridiculously colorful. 

Or maybe that's just colorful and ridiculous.

Step 4 rollup

Here is the ink roll-up. A bright orange, applied selectively and then isolated by the newsprint mask before printing. The mask shapes, by the way, are cut a little oversized in areas where I know the final image shapes will be defined by the darker colors to come. Anyone who worked as a graphic designer in the pre-computer paste-up era will recognize this as "trapping." Rather than risk an unwanted white space if registration gets a wee bit out of whack in the next layers, one prints shapes a tiny bit larger so the subsequent layers will neatly overlap. 

I don't think I explained that very well. Stand by to see the print of this step and maybe it will make more sense. Here's the mask in place over the inked block, ready for printing.

Step 4 mask in place

And here's the print. Can you see how the orange shapes overlap the previous blue at the top edges of the birds' beaks? This overlapping area will ultimately be overprinted with a really dark color, creating a clean line around the top of the beak and avoiding a white gap that might occur if I had tried to just print the orange to butt up to the darker shapes. You'll see. I promise.

Step 4 printed

But of course this bright orange isn't the only outrageous color in the beak of a male Surf Scoter. Look at THIS!

Step 5 rollup

I did a wee bit of carving, rolled up this red, and again used a mask to contain the color for printing.

Step 5 printed

These are certainly birds with distinctive schnozes. But it's time to move on from these little bits of color and get some value contrast going. Stay tuned!

Linocut in Progress: Back to work

Things have been quiet here at Brush and Baren– less so in life outside the blogosphere. I've got a piece in progress, but The Season is coming up rapidly here in Maine and suddenly there are a lot of details needing attention away from the studio.

But let's see what's been going on in between the more "administrative" parts of an artist's life. (Read: framing, packing, shipping, submitting show entries, writing exhibition statements, organizing PR images, delivering work, updating websites... and all that...)

Reduction linocut in progress: Step 1 rollup and tiny masks

I was excited that the first step of this new print only required a few minutes of carving and some little, bitty masks to keep color out of select areas. Should take no time at all to get this thing going, right?

Right?

Hm. Perhaps I shouldn't have started on a Monday, because sheesh! It took me a ridiculously long time to get the press pressure set correctly. Something that typically takes me about ten minutes took almost TWO HOURS! Why was this so difficult? No idea. Too tight... too loose... uneven... around and around I went. Mystified and increasingly annoyed. 

But I finally got it settled and rolled up some ink. I wanted to start with a blended roll... which I know from past experience can be tricky to print as a first color pass. But, hey! It will be fine this time.

I mixed a soft gray-into-blue blend, carefully placed the tiny little newsprint masks on top of the inked block, and started printing. Badly. The prints were streaky rather than blended, so after a couple of tries I decided I would be better off starting with a straight, flat color pass, so I cleaned everything up and started again.

I thought it was all going much better, but after I had pulled five more prints I realized I had been putting the masks IN THE WRONG PLACE on the block. What. The. (Insert your favorite expletive here.)

The temptation to just clean it all up and walk away for the day was pretty strong, but I took a deep breath and a quick lunch break, prepped some fresh sheets of paper, and started again. This time it all went more smoothly. Whew. The hardest square of blue I ever printed. It took almost all day just to get 28 sheets of paper on to the drying rack! Those seven (eight?) initial disasters are now the "testers," which I use as the first prints through the press on all subsequent color passes. I never have so many, especially not after the first color pass! Ridiculous.

 Reduction linocut in process. Step 1 printed. Finally.

There was a good bit of carving to do after this, but it went reasonably quickly and I was able to roll up that gray-to-blue blend for the second color pass. 

Step 2 rollup

I used masks of the same shape (you can probably tell that I am using them to save some white in bird beaks) and was able to get Step 2 finished with minimal aggravation.

Whew! I think we're finally moving in the right direction. Keen birders might even recognize the bird species represented. (And if you do, you will know why I am trying to keep those beak shapes clean.)

Step 2 printed

Step 3 rollup

Step 3 was more of the same... although with a rather long period of carving first. Again I rolled up a gray-to-blue blend, although this time I changed the temperature of the gray to something a bit cooler... maybe even leaning towards greenish. Because why not? 

Step 3 printed

The color in this photo is washed out... but the composition is now quite clear. Four birds... one of which has not required me to (ahem) keep its nose clean. It's also quite clear that these same bird noses (yes, yes... they are beaks or bills, not noses, I know) are rather stout. What do you suppose these are going to be? 

I think we will address that topic in the next post. Be prepared for some fiddly bits!

Linocut in Progress: Scoter-ing to the finish

Well. It's finished... but I'm honestly so confused about how I got there that I'm not sure I can describe it in a way that makes sense. Let's see, shall we?

I had to go back to the previous post to see where I'd left off. Oh, right. Step 7 was the fiddly details of the birds' faces... yellow in the males' bills and pale cheek patches for the females.

Step 8 brought on the drama! Hooray! Finally some darker values to kick everything up a notch. I rolled up a transparent sort of licorice green....

Linocut in progress: Step 8 rollup

And cut some newsprint masks to contain the color...

Mask in place, ready to print

Here's a side-by-side with Step 7, just to get us re-oriented.

Step 8 above, Step 7 below.

At this point I thought, "Easy peasy! All that's left is to warm up the bodies of the females with a brown and then print a black for the bodies of the males. A little spot inking and I'm done!"

But then impatience struck, and I made a right headache for myself.

When there isn't much raised surface left on the block the press roller can jump up and down as it hits empty and raised areas. This can cause smears and slippage and just overall poor printing. To avoid the problem I decided NOT to carve away the areas that were printed in Step 8, but to keep them from printing by using another mask. This is generally a fine idea... except that the previously-applied inks need to be dry enough on the actual prints not to be stripped off by the newsprint mask.

Step 9, ready to print!

Guess who didn't wait long enough for the prints to dry.

I printed the first test print. The newsprint stripped off a little color. Okay. Not bad. The second print had slightly tackier ink, because I had adjusted the intensity of color and inking in the previous color pass. Hm. That stripped off quite a bit more color.

I stopped. I thought about it. I decided it wasn't that bad... and went on.

The next day when I went back to the studio I realized I had been wrong. The stripped color was now entirely too light, and the darker birds seemed to float in space, disconnected from their background. [Insert inappropriate language choices here.]

Nothing to do but reprint Step 8... which I could do because the whole problem was caused by not removing that material in the first place. So much for being almost finished! I carved away the shapes of the female birds so they wouldn't cause the same problem, and printed Step 9b.. which was really Step 8 all over again, if you can follow that. (sigh)

Unfortunately I was so frustrated with myself at this point that apparently I didn't take a photo of everything resolved. But once the prints were appropriately DRY I cut one more mask and printed the small areas of black on the male birds.

Step 10... which is sort of 11, since I had to print 8 twice. Get it?

 The differences between the dark brown of the female birds and the black of the males is extremely subtle, but I'm satisfied that I took the time to do it, even if hardly anyone but me will ever notice.

So... here's the final image... embiggenable if you click on it. It still needs a title, but at the moment all the ones I can think of are rather grumpy.

Needs a better title than "Sherrie Got Impatient and Made a Mess,"
which is the current frontrunner.

What's next? I think I'm going to try to focus on some smaller images for a little while, and I'm going to get back to finishing up work on my online linocut course! Yes, it's been a long time coming... I have a thousand excuses for why it's taking so long... but I'm trying to get past them all and wrap up this project. At least it doesn't involve waiting for ink to dry.

Linocut in Progress: A little bit of excitement and a little bit of fiddly...

Things continue to move slowly in the studio, but they ARE moving. Part of the slowdown is continuing problems with my own focus... but part of it is that the season is changing and drying times are slower.

Yep. It's warm enough to have the windows open and to forego a fire in the wood stove. Well, most of the time, anyway! There is still the occasional chilly morning that requires a little help in the temperature regulation department, but otherwise my wood-burning method of dehumidifying the house is over until next fall.

And, I confess, I've been playing a bit of hooky and taking walks to look for spring migrants. The disruption to all of our lives caused by the pandemic is still very much a problem, but the bright light has been the ability to get out and pay attention to the changing of the season in ways I have not previously been able to. Because, you know... usually I'm running around like a headless chicken this time of year, delivering work to galleries and facilitating workshops.

But I digress....

I'm closing in on the current lino in progress, although, as usual, I've added another step to the process. I had a vague hope that Step 6 would finish off the water... but not quite...

Step 6 roll out

It took me a ridiculously long time to get this color sorted out. I wanted it to lean towards a gray-green... but with all that underlying blue it was a struggle to hit it right. I'd get the hue right but the value wrong.. or vice versa. Of course in the photo it all just looks blue, but trust me... there's a little more variety in it than it appears.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 6

That problem solved... it was time to work on the small details of the birds' heads. I think by now you can see that there are five of them.. two females and three males. The males need a chunk of yellow on their beaks and the females need some light gray patches in their cheeks. With some fiddly masking and spot inking I did get there... but it was rather tedious and I didn't remember to take any photos until after I had finished and cleaned up.

But here's where we are now:

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 7

And here's a closeup of just the birds:

Step 7, detail

Okay, then! I am hoping I can wrap this all up in another 2 passes, although I might also need to do a little spot inking in two areas. That would technically be two-and-a-half passes, which still qualifies as less than 10, doesn't it?

As for the excitement I promised in the headline... here's a little video reveal of Step 7. Because... fun!