Michael Gage

A final layer in near-black finishes the print, at last.



Hare. Linocut, 10 x 10cm.

I printed a blue and green layer...



...and then a brown layer.



One more layer to go: make the hare darker so he stands in front of the leaves, or make the background darker so that the hare emerges from the leaves...?

Finished, at last. I printed some black-blue to make the details in the windows, the top of the tower, and the boxes at the front stand out.

St Mary Axe/Leadenhall. Five stage reduction linocut, 30 x 24cm.

This is the view from the steps of the Lloyds building in the City of London, looking east to the corner of St Mary Axe and Leadenhall. Like in so many places of the City, you get a sweep of architectural history in a single view. In the centre of the picture is the 16th C Perpendicular church of St Andrew Undershaft. To the right, there's a late Victorian office building, now a branch of Lloyds TSB; and to the left, a messy lump of 1980's postmodernism. Behind them all rises 30 St Mary Axe, better known as the "Gherkin".

This print has been a bit of a nightmare at times. It's only the second print I've done this big, and it's by far the most complicated: I estimate cutting the block took about 20 hours. I think I'm pleased with the result. And at least I've learnt something: don't use red Sharpie on lino.

P.S. Just noticed: This is my 100th post on this blog.

Fourth layer: blue and grey in yet darker shades.





One more layer, and it will be finished.

The third layer on the London linocut makes more of the image appear.

I also fixed an error that appeared in the previous stage: the "Gherkin" was slightly tipping over to the right. Strangely I noticed it only when I put the photo on this blog. (I thought at first the photo was crooked, but it wasn't.)



Unfortunately, now I've put up this photo, I've noticed another error...
I'll let you try to find it, while I work out how to fix it.

I tried to add another layer to the Venice print. It's a transparent blue, to create some more shadows on the buildings and the water. But the extender, that's the stuff you add to the ink to make it transparent, isn't sticky like ordinary ink.

Instead, it's slippery, and the linoblock moves when it goes through the press. A lot of the prints ended up like this:



A few printed correctly. The trick to get it to work seemed to be to put much less ink onto the block than usual.



It's going to be a very small edition.

At last, I've got to the second layer on the London linocut.

But before I did that, I decided I still wasn't happy with the first layer, even though I'd got rid of that nasty red ink that was coming through. So I printed the block for the third time, using the original blue and grey colours. Then I was able to start cutting the block for the second layer, and printed it in darker shades.

Another layer on the hare:




Not sure about this; the hare is OK, but the grass and leaves in the background are a bit strong.



I've printed a blend from dark blue to salmon pink, at an angle. OK so far, but there's a long way to go.

I've found something that cleans the red Sharpie ink off the linoblock. It had to be something that would clean the ink, but not damage the lino. The oil that I usually use to clean the block didn't work. Alcohol didn't work. Eventually, we found something that worked: nail polish remover. The stain is still on the block, but it doesn't print anymore.

I reprinted the block in slightly warmer colours (but without the red!).



That's better.

While I try to find a way of cleaning that linoblock, I've started two more smaller (10 x 10cm) linocuts. Here are the first stages: