Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Aspen linocut... race to the finish!

Okay, okay. I'm not going to go TOO crazy dragging out the completion of this image. I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning catching up (a bit) with some contract projects and am feeling a little more... erm... moderated... in how I'm moving through the week. Time to take a deep breath and see how this aspen reduction print wrapped up.

Color pass 7
All that green from color #6 was a little startling, and I couldn't wait to get a bit of ochre back in there to tone things down. Everything still seemed on track after this pass, and for a brief moment I thought there might be only one color to go.

Silly me.
Color pass 8

After staring at this a while I decided I really wanted to deepen the "shadows" between the background trees and leave the foreground grasses light. I ended up just running a 1" band of darker ochre through the area and printing again without any further carving. It's fairly subtle, but I think it added a lot.

Color pass 9. Are we done now?

So THEN I thought I was at the last color. A nice browny thing. The entire piece definitely turned out mid-day-ish, but I liked it well enough. I cleaned everything up and headed for bed, satisfied with a 9-colors-in-two-days marathon.

But, as so often happens, by the time I was brushing my teeth I thought that maybe I could do one more thing to it. I liked the relationship of the foreground to the background, but couldn't it be just a bit more dramatic? Couldn't I give everything one more layer of depth?

Color 10. Oh, NOW it's done.
Of course I could. I could go on forever... or at least until there wasn't any printable area left on the block. So yesterday morning I experimented, darkening just the left-most tree at first but in the end printing two darker trees. Yeah. Good.

So now it's finished.... really. (Although I do need a title.) Back to map icons and brook trout, bird habitats and workshop preps. And contemplating that 16x20 block that's sitting on the table. Somehow I think that will be a slightly longer than 2-day project.

10 comments:

  1. Oh, yeah! That is a huge improvement. At each of the last two color passes before that final one, I thought: nice! But now it's great. Give your inner border collie a pat for me, okay?

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  2. You know, Sherrie - I enjoy reading your commentary as much as I enjoy seeing your artwork. You are such a hoot!

    Another home run for Brush and Baron studios with this linocut - those babies just pop after pass #10 :).

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  3. I really do like how you think. Isn't it amazing how things come to us while we are doing routine chores.

    It is beautiful!

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  4. Sherrie,
    Fantastic. Your are something!
    I love our Christmas card image from you. Years ago we went to see and Impressionist show (I know... yawn) but it was "Impressionists in Winter" at The Smithsonian. A wonderful show and bought the catalog which I love to actually thumb through in the winter.
    Do you have any prints left of the winter card? Me=interested.

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  5. I love the depth created by the tones in the trees, the last pass has made it in my humble opinion. You are on a roll..... 16x20 block!!! At this rate you'll have that done in a week - no pressure ;o)

    On a cheeky note, can we have an update on the thumbnails project? I see you've done 15 this month so far. (If only I had your energy..sigh...where do you get an inner border collie from?)

    ooohh and thank you for adding me to your blog roll, it's made my day... x

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  6. Oh Sherrie, you are so right with that last color! It doesn't pop, it zings!

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  7. Well! Thanks, everyone, for the votes of approval. Seriously, it's all of you who keep the border collie busy!

    Cheeky Lisa: thumbnail update soon. Sadly I must attend to other responsibilities today, but back to the blogosphere soon!

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  8. PS: Karen... welcome! And thanks for adding your voice to the conversation.

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Linocut in Progress: The Third Act

Time to wrap up this linocut ! And we are wrapping at warp speed (see what I did there?)... because there are deadlines. Exhibition deadline...