BASEBALL: a postseason linocut

lino cut: block ink, pen, watercolor

It's November.

MLB season is over. But I'm gonna talk about it anyway, because baseball withdrawals are real.

I always look forward to October.

It is the month of fall (kinda, I live in LA) but more importantly the month of postseason baseball.

We all know what happened this year.  And by the colors above you can probably guess what team I follow.

I really thought the boys in blue could bring it all the way home. Close, but no cigar. But I'm super proud of them for finally getting to the World Series, and for all their hard work this year. They really killed it. ​2017 was a fun season. 

​This print was finished right before game 6 of the WS. Prior to this, I hadn't done a linocut since high school.  So, it was pretty fun to experiment and carve away.  It didn't go quite as planned. I had some weird transfers the first few tries. Here's the breakdown of what I did.

Process of Linocut:

​- sketch baseball
- transfer drawing to linoleum
- carve away what you don't want printed
- paint blue watercolor swooshes - test diff papers: hot press watercolor paper (the best transfer), cold press (ok), etching paper (failed)
- ink lino cut with white paint - tried speedball block ink (better transfer) & screen printing ink (ok transfer)
- ​press paper on linoleum to transfer image​
​

sketch on phone

carving image

testing paper

2nd pull

cut outs

I wasn't too happy with the way the stitches transferred so I did some cut outs on them for more definition. The cool thing about printmaking is you can make duplicates easily, try different materials, and find what works best. 

So here's to more tries.

We'll get em next year. 

​Go Dodgers!