Here is the Victoria Palace reduction linocut in progress….

First I produce a drawing, and then trace it in order to transfer it to the piece of lino in reverse.

Here is the tracing.VP linocut tracing

Then I carve the lino – removing anything that will stay white.  Here is a picture of the tracing and the lino with the first carved lines in it.VP linocut sketch

Then I print the first colour.  Usually it is the lightest colour. I generally make at least ten prints and peg them up to dry.

VP first colour

 

With this particular print, I have cleaned ink off the block around the sky because I am planning to overprint later with a transparent blue to (hopefully) create a “night sky” effect.  If I leave too much yellow there – I will probably end up with a green sky.  We’ll see what happens around the crane.  With most of the prints I have allowed the yellow colour to cover part of the sky as I will be using an opaque orange colour next which will cover the yellow completely.

Here is a close-up so that you can see the white sections.

VP first colour closeup