Online Puzzles with the Woodson Art Museum!

Some months ago the Woodson Art Museum, home of the spectacular annual exhibition, Birds in Art, starting sharing online jigsaw puzzles of work in their permanent collection. 

I have been deeply honored to have several of my pieces accessioned there over the years, so imagine my great delight when some of them started appearing as puzzles! There are presently four of my images on the Woodson puzzle page (right now they are the last four on the page, scroll down!), along with dozens of others. 

Here are the direct links to "my" puzzles. You can change the number and size of the pieces, as well as invite other people to play with you... so... have fun!

Cruisin' - (American White Pelican)

A Tern of the Tide (Common Tern)

Shower With a Friend (Wood Ducks)

Oops. I guess I don't have a big image of this.
Ripples (mallard)

Linos and road trips and shows, oh my!

I've been on the road a LOT the last few weeks, a circumstance that will continue right up until I leave for my annual trek to Maine in early July. Yesterday I talked a friend in to joining me on a delivery run to Oh Be Joyful Gallery in Crested Butte, just over the Continental Divide from Salida. Well, maybe it's not just over the Divide. It's about a 90-minute drive via Highway 50 over Monarch Pass... but the even-more-beautiful trip over Cottonwood Pass is longer and slower. Guess which way we came home?

Afternoon clouds gathering over Crested Butte South

Crested Butte is famous for its amazing wildflowers (and wildflower festival in July), but of course it's early June, so the bloom has barely started. We did see lots of fields of fading larkspur surrounded by more dandelions than I've ever encountered. They were really quite beautiful.

Dandelions and larkspur, aspen and the edge of the Crested Butte

Cottonwood Pass has only recently opened for the season, as snow lingers long and deep at its 12,126-foot summit. The road is dirt for the last 14 miles of the approach from the west side, which is why I was so happy that the rain held off until we were maybe 3 or 4 miles from the top. It can get really slippery really fast up there.

Looking back towards Taylor Reservoir on the Cottonwood Pass climb.
Rain is definitely coming.

Plenty of snow left on the top, although the rain will melt it quickly.

On the east side of the pass ("my" side) the road is paved, so the rainy descent was no problem.

Whew! Another trip checked off the list. But in just two days I'll be off AGAIN... to......

"Shower with a Friend," reduction linocut, @Sherrie York

The opening of the exhibition Animalia, at the Loveland Museum in Loveland, Colorado. I'll be there both for the museum's Member Preview on June 9 and for the public opening on June 10. I have two linocuts in this show, including an old favorite: the last remaining "Shower with a Friend." (If you have "always wanted one" this could be your last chance!)

From Loveland I'll head to Estes Park for a couple of days, in part to give a short workshop for the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. After that I'll return home for a couple of days and then leave AGAIN... but thinking about that too far ahead just makes me more tired.

Believe it or not, there IS a linocut on the carving table. This afternoon I'll get paper set up for it, and maybe print the first color tomorrow before I'm on the road again.

Wood Duck linocut: The end game

Things got really out of control after step 16 of the wood duck piece. The changes were mostly small and subtle and probably not necessary to the overall image, but I felt compelled to try them. I think that's one of the joys (and potential disasters) of image-making: There's no way to know if an idea will succeed or fail unless one tries it.

So, in quick succession, the wood duck end game:

Step 17: The final darks on the male.

Final dark for the drake. My first attempts were too black and too high-contrast. It was appealing, but not consistent with the flatter value range I was after. In the end I hit on a transparent blue-black overall, slightly darker in the head.

Steps 18 and 19: Tone the reflections.

Here's one shot to represent steps 18 and 19 together. This was a completely obsessive move on my part and it's likely no one will ever notice but me. In flat light the reflections of the birds are hardly distinguishable from the reflection of the tree, but I wanted something to help them set into the water. I printed a transparent blue across the area below the male and a transparent brown below the female. It's barely visible, but I had to try it.

Step 20: Back to the female.

 At this point all that's left is to add some dimension to the female. Here a transparent brown.

Step 21: More tone to the female.

 And now another one.

Step 22: One little tweak to the male's face.

Since I was on an overkill roll, I decided to go ahead and add a tiny bit of orange to the male wood duck's bill. I tried to do this earlier, at the same time I gave the female her pink schnoz, but I couldn't get good adhesion of this miniscule area from the block. This orange "V" was added by hand with a size 5-ought brush. (You know, the kind with about 6 hairs.) Printmaking purists might call a foul (fowl?) here, but I am of the Whatever-It-Takes-To-Get-The-Image school.

Still not quite happy with the overall feel of the female I added one last run of brown in her face and head.

FINALLY! "Shower with a Friend"

I've struggled to photograph the steps of this piece... The effect of light variations in the studio throughout the day seem more pronounced on an image not as "contrasty" as my usual fare. I did finally get a better shot today, and for once I already have a title...

"Shower with a Friend," reduction linocut, 15" x 15" on natural white Awagami kozo.

Wood Duck linocut: Steps 13-16

It's back to that attention-hogging male wood duck for the next step of the linocut-in-progress. It's nice, however, that he's starting to feel like a solid being and not a disjointed collection of color shapes.

Step 13

The water is very flat, but I don't want to go too crazy with it. My tendency is to get lost in all the fun contrasting shapes, but this time I'm trying to keep everything in a slightly more subdued palette. It is raining, after all.

A transparent blended green was rolled onto the entire block at this stage, which I like to do in order to tie everything together. Sort of like a thin glaze in painting.

Step 14. Livening up the water. Blended green roll printed.

Step 15. A little more action in the water.

Looking pretty okay, but I wanted some more action without letting the overall background get too busy. One more solid green pass over the entire block brought everything around.

Step 16. Things get silly.

There are two tiny shapes of color in the bills of both the male and the female. Really ridiculous to put them in, so of course that's right where I went. I temporarily abandoned the color for the male's bill... I might try to put it in by hand later. But the female now looks a bit like Jimmy Durante, with a big pink schnoz.

Everything is very tacky-wet at this stage... a lesson in patience when the end seems so near. But then again, I think I see five more things that need to be done before it's finished. (sigh)

Wood Duck linocut: Steps 5 - 8

So yes, indeed, the subject matter for this linocut is the flamboyant wood duck. Well, the male wood duck is flamboyant, anyway.

It's a strange critter to try to do in reduction because there are SO MANY colors on the silly thing. Probably a multi-block approach would have been more efficient, but since when has being a printmaker had the slightest thing to do with efficiency?

Step 5: Surprise! He's not alone.

So far we have the initial blue-gray pass, then two yellows and the rust. But here's a surprise... perhaps you hadn't noticed the small white marks below our handsome male-to-be! Looks like he's going to have a sidekick.

Step 6. Another yellow?

But the male is demanding more attention [insert your preferred commentary here], so it's back to his side for a third yellow. I suspect that as things progress I will find this was overkill, but I tend to err on the side of inefficiency, remember?

Step 7: A second rusty color.

By this point I'm starting to feel impatient with all these noodly little shapes, but it's not quite time to make a bold move yet. A bright blue provides some cheer, at least.

Step 8: Cheery blue