Cutting it Fine

In between spending this weekend getting ready for today's Holmfirth Art Market, I have also managed to get this print finished for Art in the Pen at Carlisle next week. Just need to frame it up now. So here are the final stages.

Colour 9, a brownish grey base colour for the rocks.

Colour 10. Got this wrong I should have printed this before the previous colour.

Colour 11. darker shadows on the rocks.

Colour 12, a darker green across the foreground and then the final dark.

Ebbing tide at Rockliffe.
13 colour reduction linocut. 253mm x 360mm.

Rockcliffe Bay

There has been quite a bit of progress on the Rockliffe print since my last post. After printing the 2nd colour I mixed up a pale blue and printed.

 Next colour was a dark sand, marginally darker in tone than the blue.

Then a second blue to finish off the sky and add more colour into the sea.

Then the first green, this looks quite garish in the photo, trust me it looks better on the print. In any case not much of it will show in the finished print.

Colour 7 is a dark blue green for the shadowed parts of the island and distant headland.

Colour 8, a darker tone of colour 7 is  printed across the centre of the block.

to more or less finish off the background.

Next to work on those rocks down the centre of the beach, which so far I have more or less been ignoring.

An Image - of sorts

Just in case you were thinking that I'd given up on the Mezzotint and sold the plate in for scrap, here is the first proof. In my usual dis-organised manner I had decided to take on a print that not having a press I couldn't actually print. So thank you to Lisa Moore for pulling these couple of proofs from my plate for me. (Have a look at Lisa's own excellent work by following the link to her website on the right).

So what have we got. Well, considering I haven't got a clue what I am doing, the image is there but it's all very blurry and still very dark in places. (Think badly developed black and white photograph). Actually the bits that I thought I had over burnished on the plate are the darkest parts of  the proof, Which just goes to show how difficult it is to gauge what the printed image will look like from what can be seen on the plate. I suppose this will come with experience.

So it's back to the burnishing to sharpen up the definition and bring out the details in the gate, wall and barn in the middle distance.

Catch Up

A lot to do this month. Holmfirth Art Market is two weeks away and I need to make another couple of display boards for it. I have to get work framed in time for the Calder Gallery in Hebden Bridge's Summer Print Show, and at the end of the month it's Art in the Pen in Carlisle so I have started a new print which I want to get finished to take there with me.

This is the block inked up for the first colour.

and the first colour printed...

Block inked for colour 2...

and printed...

 

if this works it should look like sunlight sparkling on the sea. If it doesn't it'll just look a mess. This grey looks a bit severe in this photo, the next colour should push it back a bit.

I've also started another block. This is smaller around A5 in size. For the time being this is as far as I am going to work it. I've cut the block ready to print the first colour but that is all. I'm going to take it to Carlisle with me and print it over the Art in the Pen Weekend. Its a small and simple 5 colour print so over two days and the preview evening it should just about work. Anyway we'll see.