Posted by Dave Bull at 3:17 PM, March 1, 2010
Continued from [Seacoast in Spring - 9] | Starting point of the thread is [Seacoast in Spring - 1]
We got a bit of colour on the fish yesterday, and although that plain grey/brown tone brought us pretty close to what I actually saw that day down at the seashore, I think I'd like to take it a bit further ... 'artistic license', you know! Let's put a touch of colour along his spine:
And a bit of subtle colour on his underside:
I have no idea if these colours match anything that would be found on any of the fish in the area where I have been camping, and perhaps the fishermen among you are groaning at this, but there he is ...
And we have one more to finish it off.
I have reversed the usual procedure for this printing session - instead of beginning with the keyblock, I decided to hold it back until the end. By doing so, we get an excellent demonstration of just how vividly everything changes when there is a strong key line in place:
"I remember one of the 'lessons' that I learned on the first trips in this series - that if I stop moving for a while, and just sit still, things start to happen. So I plop down in the pool and sit quietly, trying to avoid making waves. My reward comes less than a minute later. Coming into view from 'out of nowhere', a minnow-like little fish - perhaps only about 3 centimetres long - swims into view, poking his nose into the crevices between the little stones on the seabed. He seems completely oblivious to my presence, and swims between my legs, suspended in the completely transparent water. I can't resist the impulse to see what happens when I poke a finger down into the water, and the result is predictable - he simply disappears ... instantly."
So there we have it - the last of the 12 prints in this set!
I have a lot to talk about yet with this series of prints, and over the next few days, I'll be making some more postings to discuss some of them, but right now this afternoon, there just isn't time for that. I have to get these things dried off and sent out to Ichikawa-san - who is still busy sewing up a batch of the books - and once they are out of here the first priority facing me will be to nail down the first two 'Mystiques' designs, and get carving.
The April 1st shipping deadline is not very far away ... and unlike this Solitudes series, which has had very flexible 'deadlines', the Mystique series is going to run like clockwork!
The thread continues in [Seacoast in Spring - 11] ...