Lighthouse study

We took a family trip to Pictured Rocks in the UP of Michigan this Summer. During the sunken boat tour, we passed by an old restored lighthouse. This sketch is a quick study of this wood and stone light house

Linoleum Block Cut Experiment

I have always loved the simplicity of woodcuts. My father was in advertising his entire life. I remember him taking me to the printers so he could oversee some of his printing projects. The the guys at the print shop hand leaded type and etched out the halftones used for printing. This was way back in the days before desktop publishing. I finally tried my hand at a linocut. As most readers of my blog know, I am a big fisherman. Having the privilege to catch even the smallest trout in a stream is an extreme thrill. They are the jewels of the creeks. My best friend and fishing buddy Corey caught a beautiful brown trout in our usual haunts. A quick picture was taken and the jewel was set free. The colors on trout are magnificent. Anyway, I developed a quick line drawing from the reference photo. I have been wanting to do a linocut, so I decided this would be a great subject. My intention all along was to enhance the linocut with watercolor. This way the colors of the trout would shine. If I was not going to use watercolor, I would have added more black so that there is not an even amount of black and white space.


Here is the original sketch.



Here is a shot of the linocut in process.



This is the first impression from the linocut. There are a few adjustments that need to be made.



This is a quick watercolor test to experiment with values and color. This is by no means the final version. I will make some more tweaks, create another test impression. Once I am satisfied with the printing, I will print out about a dozen or so to watercolor. Stay tuned for the final version.