"a" - 8 color reduction linocut - COMPLETE!!
Hi everyone! Okay, so it's been almost a month since my last post....I didn't realize that I had gone that long without an update. Yikes. I have had a semi-busy past month and have gotten some chances to do work on some projects while also helping out a friend who is starting up her own art center. Her and I both attended the same college and both graduated together with degrees in Art Education. Her art center will teach young children through adults. She has a long list of art techniques that she is very good at, but apparently her knowledge of linocut printmaking needed some fine tuning. I packed up my press and a bunch of supplies and spent the day giving her as much information that I could pull from my head. We also started a small reduction print so that she could get used to the feel of mixing the ink, creating the ink well, inking the block and finally printing it through the press. It was a fun afternoon and I look forward to our next meeting, where I'll be refreshing her screenprinting knowledge.
Beyond that I completed the "a" from the Las Vegas Harley Davidson Cafe sign. I really like the end result and I'm starting to kick around creating a much larger version of the entire "Cafe" part of the sign. My original version, if you look back through the history on this blog, met it's demise after I reached the 4th or 5th color. It just didn't work out and that's why I eventually just did this print here. I wanted to see if I could at least create a part of it. I figured this would allow me to work out some of the kinks that I had experienced during the first attempt.
Green Street - 8x10 - unknown # of colors linocut
I've also made a little progress on this piece here. Since my last update on this piece, I've managed to print the shadow blue and carve the block. This piece is at the "not so exciting" point. I'm enjoying it, but I have no real push to work on it all the time. I think the fact that I don't know how many colors it's supposed to be isn't helping me. I don't have an endpoint that I'm working towards and it really seems to be dragging. I can see at least another 6-7 colors that I need, but it could also be more....I promise to spend more time with this guy pretty soon.
Flamingo - 6x8 - 9 color reduction linocut
I have also started working through my mounted lino block and this is the first actual printed piece. Though the color here seems fairly dark, it is actually a lot lighter and is the first layer of the famed Flamingo casino from the Las Vegas strip.
My Blick 906 press has seen such little work since I got the 999 press that I was excited to print with it again. Once I work through my mounted block, I'll probably set it to also work with unmounted lino and do smaller pieces with it. This block is currently being carved, but I haven't gotten very far since I've been working most of the time since this was printed.
Ice Cream - 16x20 - 13(?) color reduction linocut
I've transferred and used Sharpie to trace over the pencil lines. I had to create the neon tubing shadows for this piece because the original reference photo doesn't have the appropriate sunlight. The pinkish areas will be carved shortly and then I'll be able to print. The green areas are the cast shadow. I needed to mark them differently so they didn't get lost among all the other black lines. Excited to get this piece printed.
Time to get to some carving though. I promise a quicker update, even if it's just a short update dealing with a single piece. Talk to you all soon.
#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #printingprocess #neon #lightandshadow #updates #printingprocesses
