Thursday, January 28, 2016

A Chicken for your Consideration - part two

Last time I overwhelmed you with some quality-challenged videos of me cutting my latest chicken linocut. Well, she's done and I've printed a small run. Here's what it looks like:

My small flock of Gallus linocutus
I always feel a little bit of a let down after printing and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because all the work is done and there's nothing left to do? But that's never really the case with my prints. Usually I'll take the print and rework it by watercoloring it and/or collaging it into all kinds of stuff. Who knows? My plan is to keep making prints until I figure it out.

This is an image of a Rhode Island Red hen. I have a bunch of these girls and they are sturdy, reliable members of the flock. I had a really large flock of chickens until the time of the raccoons and possums descended upon me and brought a great calamity to the chicken coop. I'm still sore about it and will have to revisit those bad memories some other time. For now, I'll keep making prints and drawings of my the girls (and maybe even a rooster here and there.)

For your edification, here's the block. Somehow I usually like the block more than the print. It's like a little sculpture.


Friday, January 22, 2016

A Chicken for your Consideration

If you poke around here for a while you will see some chickens. A lot of chickens. In fact, you may see more chickens than are strickly rational. That's as it should be.

I've been working on a series of chicken "portraits" and I have a few under my belt so far. This Rhode Island Red hen is the latest. My process here is no different than in the past, I just thought this would be fun because I have made a few videos with a new phone. New phone, better camera, better blog posts!








I realize, of course, that I have committed THE classic cellphone video sin of verticality!

PS As I look at the quality of the videos on the blog I am underwhelmed. They look better on my phone - I swear! I'll have to check into it.