Box Mask Print

I’ve spent a few weeks seeing if I could come up with a plan to turn two paragraphs of my writing into a linocut–the actual words, that is. At first the plans had little grace, then the reality of carving so many letters felt stifling. A few words here and there is something I enjoy, but this idea would have been more painful than creative.

Once I realized that I was going to change course, I looked up from a block I had decided to carve and saw the mask I made years ago out of a box. There it was, leaning against the wall at the edge of my work table where it’s been faithfully sitting. I did a quick sketch of it and made a subtraction colour print which I’ve been wanting to do for many months. I started with the blue, then cut away parts of the same block, overprinted the piece with a deep red and finally with the wisps of yellow. For the final layer, I cut away the entire surface of the block, following the shapes that were there so that the peaks that remained were all that printed in yellow. Also, I printed over wet ink as an experiment.

It’s been a good process, once again showing me the importance of registering each layer carefully. I’m going to make myself a registration board to line up the colours for future prints as opposed to the makeshift system I set up for this print.

Here’s the mask and the linocut: