Diner - Completed!!

Diner - 10x22" - 10 color reduction linocut

I printed black over the Diner print this past week.  It was the tenth and final color of this reduction linocut.  Very happy with the final result and glad that I didn't decide to scrap this project.  I still see things in the print that I wish I had changed, but you know what they say about hindsight.

I remember driving by this sign and it was a bright day, but the sun was not at a really good angle and I continued driving.  It was actually my wife that convinced me to turn around and taken another look at it.  I did and still continued driving a little bit.  I really wasn't even going to stop, but at the last second decided to.  I think the shadows on this print are rather interesting as they are long and don't necessarily reflect the shadows of the letters themselves.

The image above is slightly skewed from the left to the right.  The actual prints are not like that and the picture above is just my fantastic, photographical abilities with my phone while I'm still excited to share the print, but still in the process of cleaning up the ink.

As of today the ink is still slightly tacky, but it should be dry within a day or two.  At that point I'll start examining the prints to see which are keepers and which are not.

I finished tearing up some paper and attaching the Ternes Burton registration pins for multiple projects and have even begun working on a small series of 3x3" prints for submission to a show in New York City that I'd like to submit too.  Pics of those will be upcoming.  I literally just finished preparing one and will begin the next as soon as I'm done here.

I hope everyone likes this print and hope you all have a good night!

#art #printmaking #linocut #diner #reductionlinocut #black #printingprocess #somerset #pa #swpa #completed

One down and only one to go!!

Got to print the 2nd to last color the other day.  I printed a medium blue....not quite a true blue and not quite a dark blue.  This color is only partially seen on the edges of the round parts of the sign that hold the letters.  It is a reflection color off of the rest of the sign.  Those edges are blue, but with how the sun was shining down that day it managed to reflect back up onto those sides and gave me another color to work with.

I'm excited to get this piece finished.  I've put all my effort into getting this piece completed before starting any of my other projects.  I tend to get that way...I have multiple things going, but as soon as one nears completion I usually set the other ones aside and focus everything on that one particular piece (unless I'm really close to completing multiple projects...then I'll forge ahead with all of them).

I'm not sure what happened while printing this color, but I literally had it all over my hands.  I'm usually a fairly clean printer, but somehow this time I managed to get it on my knuckles, the back of my hands, my arms, palms....I have no idea what happened.  I'm usually good as keeping it contained to just a little on my fingertips.

Here's the final carving of the block.  It's all ready to go and even though it's only been a couple days the ink still has a light tack to it so I'm just going to wait it out and print it sometime next week....hopefully mid-week, but possibly next Saturday (EEKS!  That's a full week away!)

If it turns out to be Saturday, then I may actually just start the printing on the Green Street print that I have started.  It's only a light color and shouldn't take too much time to print since the brayer I use can cover that entire surface with 1 or 2 rolls.

Til next time!!

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

Shadow Green added to the Diner!

Quickly closing in on the end of this particular project!!

Even with the small registration issues that have plagued me since the first color, I'm very excited to see this starting to come together.  One of the amazing parts of reduction printmaking is that even though you have an idea to how it's going to look at the end....you never really know.  The colors will be different than the reference that you are using and at times during the mid-color stages you really start to question whether it's going to even work out.

It can be a real grind trying to get to the end and many times the thought of scrapping the idea floats into your head.  Usually though, things really start to turn around as you start to reach the final couple colors.  The excitement at that point makes you completely forget the issues you were having the questions that were starting to form in your head.  In the end, it almost always turns out for the better and as an artist you really come up with something that even surprises you.

A couple weeks back when I discovered my mis-registration, which oddly occurred with the very first color (yellow).  Almost every color since then has lined up with each other.  I'm not sure how that works, but apparently for this piece, that's how it's going to work out.

Here is a detail shot of the dark green shadow areas that were printed this afternoon.  Originally, I planned on using a straight Pthalo Green for the shadow, but then started thinking it was going to be too dark (as it is...pretty dark).  I tried mixing some green into some white, but unless I was printing Lucky Charms marshmallow prints that color wasn't going to work out.  Instead I used that color and mixed in large amounts of the Pthalo Green.  I eventually came up with the color shown.  Initially I wanted a darker green, but I'm very happy with the one that I printed and glad that I didn't go darker.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #Diner #neon #sign #printing #printingprocess #shadowgreen #Somerset #pa #swpa

Sky Blue update for the Diner!

Not at a whole lot of photos for this update, but happily the sky blue for the Diner print has been printed.  I'm now down to 3 colors to print: a dark green, dark blue and black.  The registration kept mostly in line with what has already been printed which is good.

These last 3 colors I'm a little concerned about though.  They are all very dark colors and I'm worried that the dark blue and the black will actually be so close in color that there will be no noticeable change where they meet.  I may lighten up the dark blue to a color that will contrast better with the black.  The dark green is merely the shadow areas on the already green printed area on the print.

I can actually feel the end of this print coming up and it makes me want to continue printing, but the light blue needs some time to dry first.....patience.

Just prior to writing this post, I finished carving the light blue areas away so I'm practically ready to go now.

I've also torn down paper for the Green Street print and the La Rose Shop.  Trying to figure out if I want to print the La Rose Shop normally (not attached to anything) or if I want to mount it to a board as I've done with the Green Street.  Guess I'll see how I'm feeling when that time comes.

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

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