Monday, May 30, 2011

Converting to Grayscale, or, Linocuts Get Poetic


At the end of April I was approached by our local poetry ensemble, the River City Nomads, about including some linocuts in their soon-to-be published chapbook. The only catch was that the work would be published strictly in black and white. Well, that... and they needed it... um... the following week, really.

One of the members brought me a draft manuscript and I started sifting through my files for appropriate images that were either already black and white or that would hold up if converted from color to grayscale. It became clear that I wouldn't have everything they needed, so on International Print Day in May I put together one additional small piece and then bundled all the scans off to the publication designer.

"On Stage – River City Nomads" was out in time for the Nomads' performances at this weekend's Colorado Art Ranch Artposium, and I was tickled to see that a few of my color linocuts converted quite well to black and white.


5 comments:

  1. Sherrie,
    Good composition is good composition with or w/o pretty colors. Good call to get them what they needed without making yourself crazy. That's a pro.

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  2. Very nice, the prints work well in greyscale.

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  3. These look wonderful in greyscale. Glad you got them all together on such short notice.

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  4. Patrick... I have a funny story about an opinionated old woman making proclamations about color vs black-and-white, I'll try to remember to blog it some day.

    Thanks, Stuart and Ellen... I was pleased with how they turned out!

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  5. Oh, the book looks lovely! I think your linocuts are very poetic to start with so I'm not surprised they look so nice in a book of poems. :)

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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...