Sailor's Delight4 - Limited Edition 4 of 6 Print

3-color linocut with pastel, image 7 x 10 inches, sheet 10 x 12 inches, trial proof 1 of 6 One night when my wife and I were in bed watching a movie - or a series, I'm not sure - I was ambushed by a brief glimpse of a red sky with a black cloud. That's all I remember of it and I when I looked for it later I couldn't find it, but it evolved into this image. I did a painting and a watercolor of it, but the linocut was - is - a challenge. My idea was to wipe the clouds out of the red ink, which would be printed over the black. To insure that the clouds would be more or less the same in each print I drew their outlines on the key block with a magic marker. I also painted the area on the ground block where the road meets the sky with white acrylic, hoping that would show me where to wipe out the red ink a little to lighten the sky at the horizon,but that didn't work as well, because I could barely see it through the black ink.(See additional images.) I used a sort of a la poupée technique (except I used brayers instead of daubers) to roll up the top of the key block with red ink and the bottom with opaque yellowish white. It needs refining but it sort of worked, and I made 6 trial proofs, adding a little charcoal to the trees where I failed to wipe out enough of the red or the white. I'll eventually do a full edition, but I like these t.p.s. The Criswell Linocut I began these experiments with linoleum back in 1999. Although these prints may resemble etchings, drypoints, lithographs or some strange hybrid (or in this case monotypes), they are true relief prints, printed in two or more colors from linoleum blocks. I didn't invent this technique - Picasso and his printer Arnera did - but I've adapted it to my own purposes and, since nobody else in the world is doing it as far as I know, I'm calling it "The Criswell Linocut." The two most important things about this technique are that (1) I cut the designs mostly with a drypoint needle and (2) that I print the dark color first and the light color second. This enables me to draw my image directly on the key block, just as I would draw with a pen on paper, rather than cut away everything BUT the image as in traditional relief printmaking. For more info about this, checkout www.warrencriswell.com/linocuts.html.

Printmaking:Linocuts on Paper

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:1

Size:12 W x 10 H x 0.1 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.