While I still had everything out, I wanted to play around with one block from last year, the Echinacea. My original sketch was made in 2020 (WOW time flies).
From that I made one of my first block with a simple outline.
There wasn't too much I could do with it. The only colour blocking I could do at the time was rather crude and sloppy. I wasn't prepared to make two partial blocks at that time.
This time I wanted to reverse the cuts, leaving the flower outline as the ink surface and the rest of the background uncoloured.
I decided to use up some of the grey lino I had left over from last year. I found a hint for softening the old lino. I put it between two sheets of parchment and pressed it with a hot iron for a short time. When I needed to re soften the lino it was a quick pass under the iron.
I made test inking as I went along as I wasn't sure how much material I wanted to remove.
Cutting this one out just took a little more focus so I didn't cut out the lines but cut on either side of them.
After proofing the outline I started cutting out the solid inked parts, carefully so I didn't cut out the lines.
I almost stopped here but I wanted to see the whole exercise through.
This was what I was after.
In an quick effort to add some colour I opted to use water soluble pencil crayons.
But as the pencil colour AND the lino ink were both water soluble I applied the colour first to the page, dried it and then applied the inked print over top.
It worked very well though you can see I didn't hit my registration marks square on, so the colour was shifted.
I also made a poor choice of paper.
This paper seemed to distort when it dried leaving a few wrinkles in the sheet.
And I need to work on my ink application (rather the working of the ink before it's applied to the printing block).
Just a little gloppy!
In all a good day.
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