#my pen & ink style was so SO uptight you guys

[gayamulet]

SO TODAY, I’m working on coming up with 1 or 2 more simple 4x6 linos to accompany the cormorant in time to hang everything for another brewery gallery through all of November. On the right is most of the inks for a HW piece that’s almost ready for color.

And I feel like I’ve had a LOT to say about lino since I began trying it last year. It’s very VERY different from the elaborate ink/paint animals I did for the last 15+ years. It’s much quicker work, and forces me to simplify in a way I literally could not imagine doing in other mediums. What’s funny is I still run into the same process issues I did with pen & ink, just in a more simplified and graphic way, which is -style direction-. The jump from gestural animal sketch to whatever comes next- whether it’s adjusting everything for inking OR breaking it down for lino, is still a bottomless pit where I put on the brakes. So I took a photo here because you can literally see where I have to do a kind of style change over, where honestly I probably don’t need to because lino is a medium where…that medium dictates the outcome so much more (imo) than pen & ink. I could’ve just mapped it and been good. It’s ok if the sketch is fucking ugly. But I’m not there yet in my own brain and have to build this safety net early so I can predict as much of the final/outcome as possible. And it’s like!!!!! You can just hear your brain screaming at itself to move on….!!!!!