New print and catch-up post

I’ve been so busy with road trips, learning new songs for a birthday celebration concert and other stuff since I began work on this print, I’ve neglected to post anything about it while in process. This print represents a few firsts for me: first landscape print, first time I’ve used opaque color, first print made with our new Woodzilla press. I’ve been wanting to do a bigger Davis Mountains (west Texas) print since we visited there this time last year. I have a few sketchbook drawings I made from the campground and some photos I’m using for reference. The complexity of the subject and uncertainty about how to approach the print kept being reasons to put it off. So, I decided I’d experiment with this little print and try to figure out some stuff. I think I’m ready to do a larger print now. I had bought a tube of opaque white ink to use on this so that I could work from the darkest transparent color back toward light values to print the rocks. With most of the print I worked from light to dark, as I usually do, and the the last two layers of ink were printed with colors mixed with white to print the rocks’ shadows and sunlit areas. Kept me from having to make a second lino block just for the rocks. I ended up with seven layers of color on this print. The frequent interruptions and trips gave the print time to dry between layers so everything worked out ok. I’m ready to get back to a more regular routine though. This print is for sale on the prints page of chetmink.com

Here are some images below to show the progress of making the image. I didn’t make a photo of the second layer of color. The yellow layer overlapped the sky in order to print the trees on top of the hill.