Nubble Lighthouse Red

Nubble Lighthouse - York, ME

So I've also been working on this mini reduction linocut and have been making decent progress.  My last update on this piece was on January 18th so you can always scroll down and see where it started.  I've enjoyed this piece very much and the registration of the colors has been very sharp.

One thing that always drives me crazy with reduction linocuts is that when the surface of the lino really starts to become minimal it becomes harder to keep the carved areas clean.  After each inking, I wind up having to take a rag and make sure that I'm consistently cleaning areas that the roller comes in contact with.

In some cases these marks (known as chatter) can help to really bring a print alive, but since I'm looking for very clean pieces of artwork, I need to wipe any random inking away before printing.

I only have 3 colors remaining on this piece and then it'll finally be complete.  I have a dark red (roof shadow), a dark grey (window/doors) and a black (top of lighthouse) remaining.

I've also begun working on the next lighthouse mini print.  I'm hoping to be able to complete a good number of these lighthouse prints for the NYC mini print show.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #reliefprint #lino #lighthouse #nubblelighthouse #capeneddicklight #york #maine 

Hot Wheels Lotus (Childhood Memories) - Competed mini linocut artwork

Hot Wheels Lotus (Complete)

Size: 2.5x4" on 10x8" paper

5 Color Reduction Linocut - Edition: 14 (+1 Artist Proof)

Cost: $40.00

I finished this little guy up about a week or so ago.  First time ever that I've achieved perfect registration on every single piece that was printed.  It's really nice to get a piece finished...reduction linocuts sometimes take so long that the end seems as though it's never going to come.  It is even worse when you are working on multiple pieces and only have so much time during the week to actually work on them.....some pieces may not get touched for well over a week since all the other ones are being worked on.

Below is a comparison of the final artwork to the actual reference.  As stated in it's title...the subject matter was a Hot Wheels die cast Lotus.  At one point I was going to do these childhood toy pieces on a larger scale, but decided to test at least one in a size that was more representative of the actual toys.

#art #printmaking #linocut #lino #reductionlinocut #lotus #hotwheels #diecast #cars #completedartwork

New Year and looking forward to a productive year!

  

Hi everyone!  So...again...it's been a little while.  I had a busy holiday season and had some minor health issues that my doctor and I are trying to figure out.

Anyhow, here is a new mini print that I've started.  It is the Nubble Lighthouse on the Cape Neddick Bubble in York, ME.  Back in September my wife and I drove to Maine for our yearly vacation.  MY wife wanted to see some of the lighthouses so we slowly worked our way up the coastline and tried hitting as many as we could.

The Nubble Lighthouse is the first one we came across and it isn't that far over the border with New Hampshire.  When we showed up it was very foggy and we were both prepared to be underwhelmed, but as we got out of the car the sea fog cleared and it became incredibly sunny and warm.  This lighthouse left an indelible mark on both of us and is one of our favorites (of the 14 lighthouses we saw).

This mini print was a test to see how small the detail could get before getting covered by ink.  So far though I'm 3 colors in and the small details have held up and the registration has been absolutely perfect...which is abnormal for me.  I usually have lost a couple at this stage of the mini prints, but so far I have lost none.

This is the progress for the first 3 colors.  This was also my first ever gradient attempt on a print and though it worked out I wound up putting the area of greatest change too low in the print and the ground covered it up....next time...roll the ink on higher.

I'm very happy with the progress so far and still have a lot more to show you from what I've been working on since October.  I'll talk to you all later.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #reliefprint #lightandshadow #lighthouse #nubblelighthouse #maine #vacation #inspiration #update

A couple updates.

 

Hi everyone!  Here are two updates since my last post. 

The Pluto's has gotten it's first green layer and I unfortunately lost a couple on this pass.  The ink coverage was not up to what I wanted and attempted second passes on a couple of the prints and doing so didn't work out for me so well.  That night I gave up and decided to continue the following night.  I wound up adding another sheet of newsprint to the padding that I lay over top of the block and paper to increase the pressure by a small amount.  This worked out well and the rest of the prints worked out very well. 

I still have about 6 colors left for this piece....and I'm partially reconsidering making a large version of this piece (14x28" or 15x30").  I like the idea of it since it's a lot of colors and would look really nice, but would really take me a long time to complete and in order for me to have it finished by next years deadlines I will have to get printing withing the next couple weeks.

I'm probably still going to do it though...I enjoy the pain that those large pieces cause me.  I also recently ordered some new large pieces of linoleum and got a large amount of paper from a closing local art store so everything is in place.  I will just need to finish the drawing for transfer.

The second image is the first two printed layers to the Hot Wheels Lotus mini print that I started a little while back.  I don't honestly have much to say about this piece at the moment as it's still early in it's process.  I do have about 3 colors to go until it's complete....it's basically 4 shades of grey, a black and the yellow.

The weather lately has slowed my printing of these pieces.  I always have a hard time getting the ink to dry quickly during the fall and early spring.  It usually takes 2 or 3 days normally and the Pluto's took almost two weeks to dry and the Lotus was about a week.  Now that the furnace kicks on occasionally though it seems to have kept the air moving and dried the ink faster on each print.

I've started a new set of mini-prints based on a couple of Maine lighthouses that my wife and I visited while on vacation there a little over a month ago.  I'm hoping that they turn out because the visiting of these lighthouses along the coast was an incredible time for me and became one of my favorite parts of the trip.  I'm not an really an ocean person...or a lighthouse person, but a lot of these lighthouses we visited have been portrayed by many of my favorite artists and just being around the lighthouses was incredible.  I'll have updates for these fairly soon and will hopefully get back to more frequent updates.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #reductionprint #printingprocess #neon #car #Pluto #Lotus #HotWheels #Disney

Pluto's Toy Palace test print

 

Pluto's Toy

Mini-ish test print for possible larger piece.

So it's been a while since my last post.  I did take about a month off of printing (again), but before that I was working on this new piece which is based off of a sign from Disney's Hollywood Studios for Pluto's Toy Palace.  I've been wanting to do a larger scale print with a fair amount of colors so while searching through previously taken pics I had taken I ran across pics of this particular sign.

As much as I'd like to just jump this straight into a larger print, I figured that it would be probably in my best interest to just go ahead and see how it would work out on a smaller scale.  I've been working on this piece since my last post and have managed to get about 5 colors in.

  

 

These are the next 4 stages and I've printed through.  I'm currently at an impasse on the next color, but since my reds tend to be fairly opaque it'll probably wind up being green which is the majority of the upper part of the sign.

I'm also in the process of creating a new registration jig for the small Hot Wheels Lotus and should have something printed very soon.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #lino #printingprocess #neon #disneyworld #wdw #hollywoodstudios #pluto #toy #lakebuenavista #florida #fl

Lotus and Spyder linocuts!

Lotus - 2x4" - 5 Color Reduction Linocut

 I've been working on a couple pieces recently and trying my hand once again at a vehicle.  This Lotus and the Spyder cars will be my first vehicles since the Dodge truck that I made a couple years back.

These particular cars are not based off of actual vehicles that I have seen in person, but rather something from my childhood that happened to be made from die-cast metal....that's right....these two pieces are based off of Hot Wheels cars that I went out and purchased just for this reason.  Hot Wheels generally creates a bunch of non-real styles of vehicles so I just focused looking for cars that looked as real as possible.


 

These are some of the many pictures I took of each car.  I tried a bunch of angles and lighting to get exactly the look I wanted.

Spyder - 12x16" - 7 Color Reduction Linocut

This is the other one that I'm currently working on.  I started this one several months back, but due to the complexity and the time that was being taken up by the Racer and Ice Cream linocuts this one got set aside....and then...I forgot about it.

The darkest grey on this image was printed this past week.  The registration is ever so slightly off...and I mean slightly.  It's possible the paper stretched a little due to the humidity because the area in question is only along the edge.  I'm currently in the process of carving this block and making sure that I know exactly what areas of the windshield and interiors areas (seats, etc) are going to be removed before printing the next color.

Anyhow, I just wanted to give everyone a heads up as to what's been happening with my artwork.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #reliefprint #reductionprint #cars #lotus #spyder #hotwheels #printingprocess #diecastcars

Took a little time off, but....

Generation - 3x3" Mini Reduction Linocut

So about a month to a month and a half ago I finished up on this Pepsi mini print.  Since that time I decided to take a little step back and relax a little bit rather than attempting to push my way through some printing...kinda like recharging my batteries.

I've started a new 12x16" piece and I'm working on a 4th Ice Cream linocut as well.  I've also begun the process of creating a new larger scale reduction linocut that will be about the same rough size as the Racer linocut that I finished a couple months back.  The new one will also be around 16x34 inches and the color count will increase from 6 to around 14.  I want to do something large with a lot of colors for no real reason other than to do it.  I dreaded printing on some of those days while working on the Racer, but I guess it didn't take too long for me to get over those feelings.

I was actually going to print last week, but decided that I needed to do a little reorganization of the room that I do my artwork in (it's a spare bedroom).  If you've ever reorganized anything then you know that it usually becomes a much, much larger project than you ever anticipate.  I'm still in the process of finishing it up today.

If things work out, I'm hoping to get that piece started by mid-late fall.  I have my subject matter, but I'm also going to keep my options open because I have a trip coming up to Maine and may see what kind of subject matter/inspiration I come home with from there.

Anyhow, for those that have checked my blog while I was away and didn't see any updates they should start to come a little more frequently now that I'm about to get back into the swing of things. 

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #pepsi #generation #reliefprint #miniprint #breaktime #cleanupnightmare #readytogetbackonthehorse