Pluto's - NEW(ish)

   

Pluto's - 15x32"

Hello again!  During my silence I also started a new larger Pluto's piece.  The previous was somewhere around 7x14", but it was only ever meant as a test print.  The smaller size left little room for detail and I needed to start the larger piece for an upcoming exhibition so I semi-abandoned the smaller version for the moment and I've been really focusing on this piece almost entirely. 

  

 

These are the first six steps for this piece.  Next up is green...which I'm hoping will really help to start defining the final piece.  There is somewhere around 6 or 7 colors remaining.  I was initially really pushing to have this completed by June 1st, but unfortunately the exhibition that I was going to submit this piece for has been cancelled due to the coronavirus.

Actually....a couple shows I was going to submit to have been cancelled....bah.

Anyhow, as I said, green is next and will be printed tomorrow morning.  I may also attempt to print the sky blue at the same time, but we'll have to see how I'm feeling tomorrow.  Have a nice evening.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #lightandshadow #neon #disney #pluto #disneyhollywoodstudios #florida #wdw #ilovedisney

Nubble Lighthouse - Finished!

Nubble - 3x3" Reduction Linocut

Hi everyone who happens to visit this page on occasion!!

Due to being an essential employee here in US, I've been rather busy with very little time to post on here, but I have continued working on various projects.

First off is this 3x3 inch reduction linocut which is titled "Nubble".  I completed this little guy about 2 or so months ago.  The final two colors since my last post were a dark red for the roof and a dark grey.  I also tried a third black color for the top of the lighthouse, but my wife said she preferred the dark grey one so that's where I stopped.

 

Here are the final two color states on the linocut block before I finished the piece.  The left is inked up with the final dark red color for the roof while the one on the right is the dark grey that was printed previously.

I have new mini lighthouse blocks started for a couple other lighthouses from my Maine trip which include Bass Harbor, Portland Head and Pemaquid.  Hoping to make a nice small series of lighthouses that I got to see on vacation....and hope they all register as well as this one did.

#art #printmaking #linocut #reductionlinocut #lighthouse #nubblelighthouse #Maine #lightandshadow

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