I have now completed my new linocut of the boats and River Axe at Uphill on the outskirts of Weston-super-Mare. This is an interesting and peaceful end of the beach, and I’m hoping to do more linocuts of the area – and, hopefully, a series on the Axe itself.
You can read the first part of this blog here.
I cut four different blocks for the image, as I needed five colours (with one block used for two colours). The colours are dark; blue (for sky, one boat, and water); yellow (mostly to give me green combined with the blue from the blue block; and grey+orange (for the cliffs, boat sails and life ring).
Here’s a picture of the carved blocks.
The dark colour is printed last, and, so far, I have printed the blue block first. However, in the future it will be fun to vary the order to see what happens, and try other combinations as well. When I do this, I end up with a variable edition.
First colour in blue Caligo oil-based inks. I let it dry for a few days and then overprinted with the yellow block.
The yellow over blue gave me my green as planned (though I might experiment with a version without yellow, as I haven’t used it much in its own right. Perhaps simpler just to use a green!)
Next – a few more days later – overprinting the orange+grey block. Then, after another wait, the dark grey. I didn’t do much adjusting of blocks in between as I had already made test prints using Akua water based inks.
In this particular final print, the grey has been a little underplayed, but the sky is a nice hazy shade. These are the variations I end up with my early prints! It does mean that each print has greater individuality.
You can buy a greetings card of this image in my online shop!