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! 

Linocut in Progress: Laughing gulls smirking

Laughing gull linocut: Step 8

Well, I couldn't take much of that bad-lipstick look, so I did a little spot inking and put a layer of transparent black on the birds' heads. Easy enough to do because all of the material in the area around the heads has now been removed from the block.

Spot-inking the birds' heads.

It's not the final black, but it's enough to keep me from being distracted by the ungraceful red shapes.

Oh look. Another gray. This one with some blue to it.

You might have noticed that my application of ink seems ragged and uneven. That's partially intentional and partially not. I'm experiencing some technical difficulties in my new space, I think mostly having to do with temperature regulation and drying times. But I also find a certain charm in allowing the texture of the paper to take precedence, so I'm doing a little experimenting. I hope it doesn't come back to bite me. Smirk, perhaps. But not bite.

Linocut in Progress: Laughing gulls

Many thanks to fellow printmakers who commiserated with the minor geographic inconvenience of a studio away from the house. It's good to know one isn't alone in one's 'druthers, and I quite liked being the clearinghouse for "guilty" studio habit secrets. ;-)

I'm finding weekends to be my best times in this new space, mostly because I have the building more or less to myself. During the week other offices have folks coming and going, which I find unsettling. Yes, another studio quirk: I like to have as much control over my soundscape as possible. You know how important it is to have quiet when one is playing Star Trek episodes as background company for the umpty-bazillionth time.

Slowly but surely the birds have begun to emerge in this linocut-in-progress.

Laughing gull linocut, Step 5

Given their postures you probably won't be at all surprised to learn that I'm working on a species called "laughing gull." Of course seabird researchers will tell you that their incessant calling is not the least bit funny when you're sharing an island with them for weeks on end.

Laughing gull linocut, Step 6

There is at least one more gray to go, but at this point I was getting pretty darn tired of the same inks over and over so I decided to do some spot printing in the birds' bills. I think here that they look like either old ladies or two-year-olds with questionable lipstick application skills.

Laughing gull linocut, Step 7

And then back to gray. Obviously Steps 6 and 7 were shot at two different times of day... Step 6 is entirely too dark overall. That would have been a night shot. Many are the times I've found myself wandering out of here after dark– not a huge stretch since it's dark by 5:30 pm. Thank goodness the winter solstice is only what? Six weeks away? Five? But who's counting?

Linocut in progress: Finding a rhythm

Studio F up and running

Slowly but surely I'm developing a new daily routine. My studio space is, according to the GPS on my phone, 6/10 of a mile from where I'm living. This is the furthest my work space has been from my living space... ever... so it's taking a bit of adjustment.

No more printing in my pajamas, for example. I am obliged to get dressed before arriving in the studio, especially since it is my intention to walk between home and work each day and winter is approaching. My jammies are cozy, but they're not weatherproof.

If I intend to spend the day here, as I did today, I also need to bring a lunch unless I want to start a bad fast food habit. No more tripping off to the kitchen when the mood strikes. This could be a good thing.

The studio is also the only place where I have internet, which puts a damper on my evening working AND surfing habits. It has been fairly typical that I don't settle down to work until late afternoon and then work into the evening when I have contract assignments... but no more! At least for now. And no more compulsive checking of Facebook when I'm not sure what else to do with myself. (Thank goodness.)

So far I find I like the focus. I've been coming into the studio in the morning, spending an hour or two catching up on long-neglected administrative tasks, and then turning my attention to the print bench. Lovely.

Two new passes have been accomplished on the linocut-in-progress since Saturday's check-in.

Laughing gull linocut - Step 3

 Step 3 involved a blend of the previous two inks, made slightly lighter and more opaque with the addition of white. Light ink over a darker tone might seem counter-intuitive, but can really be striking in some instances. This particular application is subtle and early in the game, so not really any big deal.

Laughing gull linocut - Step 4

Step 4 involved a false start. Initially I tried another blended roll of the previous two colors darkened with a brown. Eh. Not effective and not really necessary, so I cleaned the block and the ink slab and instead printed a solid but transparent darker gray-blue. Better.

The next step involves some rather tedious delicate carving of bird feathers and rocks. Fun times.

Tomorrow, however, my schedule includes several appointments elsewhere so I'm not likely to get to the studio. EEK! This is where the new setup becomes challenging. What do you mean I can't at least wander through the studio and rearrange my tools before I go to bed?

Ah, well. I might throw the block and my tools in my backpack and take them with me when I leave this evening. I can always go back to making lino crumbs at the kitchen table, just as I did in my early printmaking days. :-)

Linocut in progress: Hooray!

Ahhhhhhh.........
Back to work!

Three simultaneous moves are finally completed! I'm more or less settled for now, so took advantage of the first opportunity in weeks to spend all day in the studio. I caught up with a contract project that needed a small change, took care of some administrative tasks, and happily started work on a new linocut.

The first two colors made it to the page... a pale blue for some shadows and a pale tan for some background rocks. I haven't given a whole lot of thought to what happens next... I was just so anxious to be slinging ink that I dove right in. Now that I've started I can slow down and consider my path.

It's sunny and warm enough up here today that I've got the window wide open, but all that is supposed to change next week. Snow in the forecast for Monday into Tuesday. I'm ready to hunker down and get work done, so bring it on!

Drive-by Posting

Lacawac Sanctuary, PA

Hi everyone.... It's going to be a few more days before I can regale you with a proper post. Tomorrow will be the "final" push to move my stuff into storage... then I have until next Thursday to unload an entire room full of discards and get myself schlepped to temp digs. Argh.

I stopped in to the studio today for the first time in more than a week and it was all I could do to make myself walk back out again to come home and finish packing. Want to print. Now.

As a peace offering I share with you two photos from last week's exploratory trip to northeastern Pennsylvania. More on this later.

Yay! A day of canoeing and visiting with a buddy on the Perkiomen.

Studiowork Saturday! American Robin linocut

Okay then!

I've been feeling a bit punky the last few days– a combination of changing weather and physical and mental tiredness, I think. I feel as though I've been packing and moving forever.

So none of that on Saturday! I did a couple of tasks first thing in the morning and then went off to spend the day in the new studio. No surprise, I guess, that I felt better than I have all week.

I finished carving the little robin and decided to go ahead and print it. Elvis (Press-ley, the baby press) got into the act because it was a large (for me) edition of 65 and only a single color.

The image was printed in a dark brown on a cream-ish Rives paper. The drying prints all show a frame, but that will be trimmed off once they are dry. I don't usually work this way, but it seemed prudent to have this extra material all the way around to support the press roller evenly across the block.

Here it is all trimmed up:

Technically these prints are a surprise, commissioned by an organization that shall for the moment remain nameless. (To help preserve the surprise.) They aren't going to be presented until December, so I'm hoping that if an intended recipient happens to be reading Brush and Baren now they will have forgotten all about this post and still be surprised when the time comes.

Fits and Starts (Mostly Fits)

Apparently getting the studio moved and set up before moving the rest of my belongings into storage was an idea that could have used some more scrutiny. Yes, it's nice to have the space more or less functional, but it's killing me that I can't get in there and USE it yet! Too much packing and moving still happening at home.

(Sigh.)

But all is not completely lost. Today I hit that stage of packing in which nothing either fits together or makes sense to be in the same box together, so I gleefully called a timeout and packed myself off to the studio.

As predicted, I abandoned the also-ill-conceived-but-desperate-to-carve-something piece I started last week and started something new. This is a commission piece, just black-and-white, but it's going to be a largeish edition (60+). I'm carving on unmounted lino because it seems prudent with an edition that size to enlist the help of Elvis* rather than baren print all of them.

 Tomorrow will bring a little more packing, a little more moving... and hopefully a little more carving.

* Elvis Press-ley is a Richeson "Baby" Press.

Not-so-Fieldywork Friday

Guess what this is:

Yep. It's a pile of lino-kanoodles. Guess where it was made.

Yep. Here! In the new Studio F!

Posh, isn't it? Maybe a wee bit too posh... I'm nervous about the carpet, but I bought another rug (Look! It matches! Sort of.) for the area directly under the print bench, so hopefully it will be okay.

That long surface on the far wall will ultimately hold computer, scanner, and printers. Right now it's just a lovely clear space. There's also a folding table that may or may not inhabit the center of the room. In a perfect world it will only come out when I need extra horizontal surface.

This room is roughly the same size as the one I came out of, with the minor problem of no closet storage. The biggest disadvantage is that this studio is again upstairs, so my big, heavy flat files for paper and print storage are not here. Thankfully the unit I have rented to store all my household goods is downstairs in this same facility, so the cabinets won't be far away. I've got some archival boxes to hold my immediate needs upstairs and will just get more exercise when I have to replenish.

The advantages include better light and a proper professional space to host the occasional open studio. And without the monstrous flat files taking up so much real estate I have more room to move about, stand back from the work AND give the drying rack its own wall.

And my one window has a pretty darn nice view, once you get past the industrial buildings below.

It will feel "homier" once there are prints drying on the rack and after the computer and its varied equipment gets in place it will feel like a versatile workspace. (My contract work requires a lot of computer time, and it's nice to be able to do bits and pieces while waiting for ink to dry.. or sneak a few minutes to carve in the middle of something more tedious.)

The one "lifestyle" change that I've yet to manage is that this space is far enough from where I'll be living that it's not convenient to just pop home for lunch. If I want to avoid too many trips to the nearby fast food joints (bleah) I'm going to have to plan ahead. No more random grazing trips to the fridge... which could be a good thing.

All things considered I think it will be an interesting new way to work. The carving I did today probably won't come to much... the design was thrown together without much thought... but I wanted to at least go through the motions of working to see what I might have overlooked in this setup. But I started to draw up a new seabird lino, and got a workable idea for a small print commission, and it felt good to be thinking about something other than packing and unpacking.

Closed for relocation

Today's the day... The bulk of my studio is stacked in the front room and friends are coming to help me shift it all to a new location. Feeling pretty anxious about the whole thing.... I hope I can settle into the new space quickly and get my printing groove on. I have work to do!