Rooks rattle you.......

My work on the lino cut of the rooks continues, cutting away the blue sky and then printing the yellow background.  It was seeing some black 'sooty' rooks flying  against  the vivid yellow background of a field of rape which gave me the idea for this image and I'm pleased with the contrast. However, as with all creative things, the unexpected happened as I played about with an experimental print......

Blue sky cut away to allow for the second printing of yellow

Second colour printed. The top left hand print was one which I did right at the end, playing around with the blue left over on the roller which I didn't want to waste. Of course, now I realise that I really like the effect and wish I had done more......

Just the rooks left now..... it's at this stage that I wish I had done a separate block for each colour so that I could reprint in different colours and do some more blue backgrounds. Another reminder of the perils of reduction printing. However, it does make me appreciate all the more the hard work and thought that goes into this creative process - it's probably one of things that you just can't understand until you've tried it yourself.

  

A quick hand print on Japanese paper of the final image of the crows. If nothing else, I'm still left with this but the next stage is to put the block through the press and see if my registration plate does the job.......