Two new colors for the Racer!

Racer - 16x34" - 7 Color Reduction Linocut

Hi everyone!!  Been a bit busy lately....life seems to be getting more and more in the way of this blog, but I'm still trying to push ahead.  The Racer rollercoaster sign is almost finished!!  One color to go.  The past two weekends I've been busy printing the sky and the very dark blue area of the hanging flag banners along the bottom.

Each photo was taken at a different time of day so I apologize about the difference in colors on the two.  The sky is closer to that in the top picture than that very bright blue in the bottom pic.  I'm pretty excited about how this piece has turned out.  Registration has been very good and other than a little issue getting the blue to print over the shadow red in a solid tone...things have gone well.

When I first printed the sky color the red underneath really wanted to show through.  So I reprinted the first ones sky a second time and it still turned out a little questionable, but passable.  When I printed my second piece the same thing happened so I doubled up printing the blue.  I still wasn't 100% happy with it....so I tried a third time.  This was not a great idea and the outcome was pretty hideous.  I blotted both the first and second attempts heavily with newsprint to remove as much ink as possible.  The remaining pieces to the edition were all printed with a single blue layer.

I decided that being patient and trying again once the single layer of blue dried might work better for me.  Thankfully I managed to talk myself into that patience because when I printed the blue again later that week things turned out really, really nice.

 

Here is the edition drying after the second weeks printing of the blue and below is the block as I was carving away the sky.  FYI....that carving tool is somewhere around 1/4 inch wide....that sky took forever to carve.  Only black remains though!!

That's all for now!  I have to get my lunch ready for work and get ready for bed.  The Ice Cream reduction linocut has also been moving along nicely and I will try to create a post about it tomorrow night!

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #reductionprint #Racer #rollercoaster #Kennywood #Pittsburgh #PA #412 #amusementpark