Reduction linoprint stage 2 'The Ripple Watchers'

Following on from a previous post, I had made half a dozen orange prints of 'The Ripple Watchers' and last night continued the 'reduction print' process by carving away the same lino for the 2nd (last) colour. Black is the second colour and using a piece of tracing paper over the orange print, I drew roughly the areas which were to be black. Not a big job as there was in fact, very little. Notably the men's eye pupils and the fish's scales. Everything else in the 'suicide' process of a reduction linocut, gets cut away for good. That means for sure that there will be no extra 'limited edition' runs of this one! There is no going back to the first stage of a reduction linocut as it's all been destroyed in the process of the art. This adds extra pressure on the artist to get each stage right (as there's no seperate lino/colour layer to re-do if it's not right) but also extra value in terms of uniqueness, as the print run can never be repeated. Picasso was very fond of the 'reduction linocut' idea, but I'm sure it wasn't just because it added value to the price of the limited edition.

Onto a Big One

The following is my short story-writing entry (very short at only 150 words) in the current Sage 'Salmon Tales' fiction-writing competition. The drawing isn't judged (or included even), but I had already posted this sketch earlier and now you can appreciate it in its intended context. I'll let you know if I win a salmon rod. Any comments or other support is welcome! Thanks!
The pool looks particularly tricky to cover. I straddle a rocky channel and back-cast to avoid the overhanging trees. The line sweeps sweetly round behind me. I wait. A hiss as the line pulls tight, then nothing. A boulder, surely. A huge bow-wave surges towards the rocks I'm standing across. A giant salmon emerges, thrashing its way through the shallow pass. The line snags, then snaps with a hiss. I panic. As the beast appears below me I drop onto its back, gripping its dorsal fin, clamping its body with my legs. We descend into the dark pool. Freezing darkness, green and white flashes of light all around. The salmon bucks and bolts as I snatch gulps of air. We beach on a shallow bank. Exhausted, I loosen my grip on him. He looks me in the eye for a moment then slips away into the dark water.

A Suitable Fly

I drew this on my homeward journey last night on the train. He‘s found that fly that fills him with hope. The first fly. The one that’s been on his mind since he woke up. His lucky fly. Not the gaudiest or the best-tied, but something indescribable. A Suitable Fly. Okay, he looks a bit like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, but that’s not a bad thing. He’s obviously done too much fishing as he’s looking like a fish. But come to think of it, can you do too much fishing? I don’t think so! Black Biro on recycled sketchbook.

090506 ‘The Trout that turned’ main drawing

Very pleased with the outcome. The sense of grievance is conveyed nicely by the trout and the surprise by the angler comes across well. Sometimes it just all gels and comes together and last night it did just that. I used the paler blue biro to ghost some lines in first to get the sizes right in transferring visually from the thumbnail sketches. Blue and black biro on the usual brown sketchbook paper. Many of the fish and fisherman sketches are done purely for the pleasure of it, i.e, not necessarily drawn as part of the sketch-to-painting process, but I will certainly come back to this one and develop it in some form or another at a later date. Any opinions out there?