Feet and Beaks

Having spent the evening cutting out stencils, which I thought were pretty accurate, I found I had to cut them out again as somewhere in the distant past I must have slightly changed the composition from the original drawing. I salvaged it by cutting the paper up and strategically placing it over the lino which seemed  to do the job.

Stencils being re-cut

So on with the yellow ink. I went for a pure Dairylide Yellow and extender which will form the basis of the feet and most importantly the beaks.

Inking up with yellow

The yellow looks quite alarming against the pale blue and grey but hardly any of this will show by the time all the other layers are over the top. One thing I have learn't about this process is to not get swayed or diverted by weird things that go on in the middle of the print. As a painter I would never make this decision so there is a certain amount of trust (or nashing of teeth) in the printing process itself.

Yellow against the blue

Next step will be to print shades of orange so more stencils and more shocking colour combinations, but this will make the distinctive beaks that give puffins so much character.

For those of you who have visited my Etsy shop, you will have seen my last Puffin print, 'First Catch', which is a small dry point print, hand coloured to show off their distinctive beaks.

'First Catch', Dry Point Etching