Yesterday while I was sorting things (again) in the studio, I found two tablets of tracing paper. They had been in the very bottom of an old Rubbermaid bin that was full of paper stuff that I have been saving for years and years. I didn't think much of it at the time...just "cool -- more tracing paper." Last night when I needed a piece of tracing paper I grabbed one of the tablets and this full size page fell out. I don't remember exactly where the image came from but it looks to me like I traced a "real" bear for a simple outline to carve, leaving one plain/smooth and doing one fuzzy. I thought "ooh -- neat -- I will do something with these guys sometime."
This morning they were really bugging me.
I have been a bit stumped for an idea for the ATC exchange for January. The theme is Weather.
When I was looking at these two guys together I thought it looked like the smooth bear was dry and the fuzzy one was wet. That gave me an idea.
This afternoon I have been playing with the image in my photo program (I wish I really knew how to WORK that program) -- trying to resize it (the guys on the tracing paper are about the size of my hand), photocopying the image and changing the size that way, scanning the newly re-sized image, and then trying effects on it to see if I could make a negative (like I used to be able to do with my old photo program on my old PC). (It's not that the stuff on my Mac can't do what I want it to do -- it's that I don't know how to make it do it. Sometimes I accidentally stumble on a workaround but I never remember how I did it...LOL...and I just do not care enough about computers to take classes.)
So I finally got an image I could use and I transferred it (very messily) with a soft pastel to the carving block.
This is the cleaned up block after I went over the transferred lines with an oil colored pencil (that just happened to be in my desk drawer) -- I couldn't find a wet enough thin line Sharpie...LOL.
This is a group shot of the various stages of what I did today.
On the bottom left is the carved (so far) linocut block...I'm taking it slowly.
In the middle is the test print.
On the bottom right is a photo program doctored version of a scan of the test print...to see what I might be able to do with it.
It has been an enjoyable process (when I let go of the frustration with my lack of computer skills). I like the idea of the bear up to his shoulders in a nighttime snowstorm.
But then again...I might come up with something else now that I am partly on a roll with the Weather theme.
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