Back to basics…

Maybe I told you that I got some new gouges from Monsieur for Christmas.  I hadn't known that I wanted them!

   It was a great surprise to see how much more accurate it is to cut wood and lino with tools that stay sharp for a long period and some that get into tight corners.

  So I am back to drawing and experimenting with a very basic type of design which allows for hand coloring with watercolor afterwards…. using only one block.   

Here are the results of my first forays into a new material:  I used a thicker (4 cm) and lighter colored lino which makes it easier to see the design but also has the disadvantage of crumbling often when certain kinds of cuts are made.   Thicker linoleum also means that I won't be able to use the best roller press in the studio as no one else is using this size. 

Nevertheless I was able to print these black and white prints on our smaller, (and inferior) press at school and now I'm having the innocent pleasure of coloring them each by hand.  

 Maybe I am regressing to the desire of a coloring book ( which wasn't allowed when I was growing up).

In this one the frog is done with gold watercolor which doesn't show up in the photo.  I thought it would introduce a playful element which seems in keeping with my naive design.  Someone asked me what my theme was and I heard myself say: "enchanted forest".   Sometimes it feels good to be a kid again. 

You can see that I altered the design on this one slightly with a black pen after the print was made. (See the borders on the left. ) The biggest leaf at the top is done with silver gouache but the slight sheen does not show up in the photo.

For this one I used brown ink as the main color for the design.

Despite the poor background colors in these photos, all of the prints are done on cream colored DFK Rives archival paper.  

So which colors do you prefer?   This is a personality test!