Diner Green!

So I printed my Diner Green this past week and I'm really happy with how it turned out.  As soon as I finished printing and cleaning up I immediately started carving away the green areas because I now only have 4 colors left to print and I'm getting excited.  Next up will be the sky blue and I'll follow that with a dark green, dark blue and finally black.

I'll be honest, I was having doubts about this piece after having the registration not work out so well during my last printing, but I'm back on track with it...just a few less well registered ones than I would've liked.

I've also started yet another piece and with this one I'm going to try a new registration technique that I read about.  This is a 7x12" piece that I'm just going to title "Green Street".  Its a shot that I took off of my front porch and up the road from me.

I'm a large fan of urban-ish plein air paintings and have wanted to try one as a reduction print.  I love the way that those artists are able to capture the falling light and shadows and this will be my first attempt at that kind of subject matter.  It has so far proven to be more difficult than I was thinking.  I keep wondering if I should've gone larger, but this piece of linoleum was a left over and I wanted to use it for something.

I had read about linocut artists mounting their linoleum on boards and then taping down their registration pins to that same board.  It is generally supposed to offer perfect registration....soooooo....I'm going to give it a shot.  I bought permanent double sided carpet tape and attached it to a piece of chipboard and then placed the lino piece down over top of it and pressed it firmly onto the tape.  My piece of lino is now permanently attached to the chipboard.

Hopefully I really like how this works.  I bought 10 very large sheets of chipboard and it would be unfortunate if I didn't want to use them.  The piece of chipboard is about 10x16.  I was hoping that be keeping it smaller I'd have an easier time carving the lino.  I tend to flip my lino in every conceivable direction while carving.

I'm going to be able to work this coming Thursday on these pieces so hopefully I'll have a quicker update than I've been having.  I've kind of hit a spell of creating new pieces, but not getting anywhere with the ones that are already ready to proceed with.  Soon enough I'll have more work than I ever wanted.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #Diner #neon #sign #Somerset #PA #GreenStreet #Greensburg #pleinair #houses

Diner with some other updates

Last week I printed the next color of the Diner print.  This image makes the color look very blue, but it's closer to a light green (sea foam green) color.  Unfortunately, there was some registration issues and now only 2 of the 10 are still registered good.  If you look closely at this picture in the bottom left you can actually see the shadow yellow which was the second color printed.

I'm disappointed, but still want to forge ahead with this piece and once I'm done then I'll take some time to figure out what I want to do with it.  I'm starting to consider other ways of working with the registration so that these issues do not occur as much.  I have some ideas, I'm just not sure which direction I'm going to head with them.

I also decided that I was going to revisit an old reduction that I began a good while back.  Shortly after buying my first at home printing press I started a neon "B".

 

These are no pics from that edition.  I wound up moving on from it because I was working with mounted linoleum and this piece was unmounted.  It was just partial laziness of not wanting to alter the pressure on the press.  To be honest though I did not like the color that I had put on the last time I printed (see picture on the right).  So my time away was to see if I felt differently later and/or to not have to change the pressure.

I was going to start to finish it last week and pulled it out to look at.  Most of the Sharpie lines have disappeared on the lino making it difficult to figure out what needs carved...or if I have already carved what I needed to.  To be honest it is quite hideous and the order that I printed the color was a little off and it appears that on the last color there were significant registration errors on most of the prints.

I've always liked the looks of this piece so I decided....

...to start over.  Luckily I keep all of my artwork and ideas for each project after I finish them and file them away.  This is exactly the same as the original, but I think I'm going to alter the tubing this time to avoid the thin line that runs down the center which shows the orange line.  We'll see though as I do like how it was originally turning out (see above picture on the left).

 

I'm also starting a landscape that will be a multi-colored reduction print as well.  The left is my reference photo from my trip to Utah.  I think it was actually taken while I was driving.  The right is a photoshopped version where I created dual layers and altered one of them and then reduced it's opacity so that the original would show through.  I plan on doing a tracing and then using it to identify how and where I'll simply the image to better suit a linocut.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #updates #Diner #LightGreen #neon #sign #B #Buca #Utah #Utahlandscape #landscape

Shadow Red - Diner update!

 

I printed the next color on the Diner print this morning.  At first I used a non-mixed Quinacridone Red, but it didn't have the necessary contrast to the red beneath it.  I mixed some violet into the red and came up with a good color that was darker, but not too dark that the contrast was too great.

Though the colors on this image are a good bit altered due to the light from the window, this detail shot shows how the shadow red looks on the letters themselves.  I'll be starting the carving after finishing this post so I can print the next color...though I'll admit, I'm not completely sure which I'm going to do next.  It's either light green or sky blue.

This is a ghost image of the block after I was finished.  I printed a copy off onto newsprint to help clean off the block.

I've also been slowly working on the La Rose Shop image and the inking of the image with Sharpie markers.  The bricks are going slower than anticipated, but I want to make sure that they don't angle oddly with each other.  I'll also be coloring the letters in with different colors so that I can not confuse what gets carved and what doesn't.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #Diner #neon #sign #red #shadow #LaRoseShop #inking

Diner and La Rose updates

 

Okay.....so my intended update to this post took longer than expected.

I ran a second printing of the red which I had missed areas of initially and the second pass red is almost dry.  I gave it a touch test last night and it was still slightly tacky.  I realized that I'm also half way done with this piece which is pretty exciting.  

Here is an up close look at one of the letters.  Showing the neon tubing and the cast shadows on the yellow.  Beside it is a carved away "E".  I've removed all the "red" areas and have left only the areas that are the cast shadow from the pieces that hold the neon tubing away from the surface.  I've also carved away the area that needed the second red printing, but there is no use showing that as it was just a tiny vertical segment (in the image of the carved full block above...it's the vertical line on the right of the block...I merely widened it.)

Also......

Transferred the tracing of the La Rose Shop neon sign onto linoleum the other night and started tracing it in Sharpie Marker.  It is sized at 9x22 inches.  I originally was shooting for 10x22, but due to a cutting error with the linoleum I had to scale it down slightly.  I don't think that that is a bad thing though...the only thing that was actually lost was just some brick work.

This piece appears to be no more than maybe 5 or 6 colors..probably six, but we'll see. 

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #Diner #neon #sign #Somerset #PA  #SummitDiner

#LaRoseShop #Greensburg #PA

Diner update - Carving

Current update for the Diner print has me working on nothing more than carving away the neon tubing.  At this point I've gotten everything, but parts of the R and the D has yet to be started.  I'm thinking that come Saturday I'll be able to print the red color which is the interior color of the letters.

Originally I was hoping to get the printing done by no later than Thursday.  My wife though has both of the same days off that I have this week so we've decided to head out of town for both days.  We are planning on heading out to Columbus, OH to go see the Chinese Lantern Festival that is currently being shown at the Ohio State Fairgrounds (or whatever it's called...I'm honestly not to sure).

My next update should include the printed red as well as a couple pictures from the festival.  Until then, have fun!

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #Diner #neon #sign #SomersetPA 

Diner update

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to everyone.

I printed the 2nd color to the Diner print a couple days back and just haven't had time to post about it.  I did manage a post on Instagram, but nothing here due to how much time I've spent at work this past week.

The images above are both the inked up lino block (on the left) and the printed 2nd color over the initial yellow.  Almost all of the prints are dead on with their registration which is nice.  I think I may have figured out how to finally alter the ink with Tack Reducer so that it's not so darn...well...tacky.

The new yellows that I bought were both Canfield Traditional Relief Inks which I have never tried, but they both worked out real well and I'm happy with my purchase of them.  Will definitely be looking into getting more of them in the future.  They have a very nice consistency and I don't have to use as much Tack Reducer to get them to a point where they don't stick to the lino block.

 

Here is a picture of my setup for printing this block on my press.  Very happy with the Blick 999 press.  Doesn't pull on the paper like the 906 did which allows me to use the Ternes Burton registration pins that I had bought.  I was getting concerned that I had bought them for no reason when the pressure from the press would pull on the paper and cause the plastic registration tabs to stretch.

I've also completed the carving of the Diner block and I'm ready for the printing of the orange for the outside parts of the neon tubing.  I'm just waiting on the recently printed ink to dry up enough for the next printing.  I'm shooting for Thursday to print.

I've also been working with the La Rose Shop tracing still, but have come to an issue which I believe is simply something that is tricking my eyes.  The bricks on the side of the building appear to be going at different vertical angles and I've had to erase all the bricks and re-evaluate where they are and how they look....but, still they look to me as though they are going in weird angles.  I'll figure it out or just force them into the same direction with my pencil.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #reliefprinting #Diner #SomersetPA #carving #inking #CanfieldTraditionalReliefInks #Yellow #DeepYellow #updates

Diner printed and a new project started!

So after purchasing some new ink and hoping for the best with the yellow, I finally got to use my new press for the first time the other night.  I was very excited to actually get to use the press and can't wait to really get things rolling.  Above is the current printed color for the Diner print and I'm currently involved in carving away the yellow areas which is a little more tedious than I hoped, but I caught some areas that I probably would have missed which is good.

Shortly after printing the first color and cleaning off the linoleum, I grabbed my carving tools and got started working.  I really hope that I'll be able to print this coming Thursday, but that will all depend on whether or not the ink dries enough.

 

My progress so far has been pretty good and carving shouldn't take too much longer I think.  Maybe another hour or so of straight carving and I should be ready to print.

If not....then I can always finish the tracing portion of the La Rose Shop which is located in my hometown of Greensburg, PA.  This sign probably hasn't seen actual use in a couple decades and the building that it adorns is currently under renovation and I'm really, really hoping that the sign also gets fixed up and lit up again.

Either way...whether I get to print or not, I'll still have some kind of work to do on Thursday.  Feels good to get things moving again.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #Diner #Yellow #carving #SummitDiner #SomersetPA #LaRoseShop #GreensburgPA #neon #sign #tracing