Octopus Love Search

The Octopus Ink gallery here in Anchorage just celebrated its two-year anniversary, and to celebrate all of us artist folks created octopus themed work. I knew I wanted a patterned background and I always love a good honeycomb pattern, so that part was easy. I had a hard time deciding what the octopus should be doing. Originally I had this idea of the octopus yelling something ala Russian Constructivism, like this:
Which would be super cool, but the triangular "yell" shape somehow made me think of the light of a flashlight, which obviously needs to be shining on something... and well, you see where it ended up. I really love Russian Constructivist graphic design, but this octopus print is clearly not it! Another print, perhaps!
Anyway, I love the yellow/gold paper. And I can't get enough of printing with white ink. And I also kind of love that the eyes of the octopus look a bit insane.

Cranium, Moth linocut print

I finished this almost a month ago. I've had a hankerin' to work on some work that is a bit more... random. And I'd say that this print certainly does the trick. I started with wanting to make a chevron pattern for a background (and to print on fabric eventually). Then, I'm sort of obsessed with phrenology heads and bug illustrations, and well, it just happened.
I printed maybe 5 or 6 like this, but I think next I'll keep the paper and the ink of the chevron pattern in similar shades so that they aren't so high contrast.

finished pallet headboard

My pallet headboard has been finished for a while now but I've been waiting to get some good pictures of it before I posted it... I don't really qualify these fisheye photos as good ones, but I just never can resist a good fisheye!
Anyway, it is finished and hung up. It took me a while to decide whether to mount it to my bedframe or the wall, but I finally decided on the wall.

Where the caged goose quacks

My newest print is a tribute to our dear friend, the quacking goose. I just love a good birdcage, and every bird looks a tiny bit cuter in a cage, even if it isn't the ideal living condition for a flying critter. Lets just say that this goose was bad (he hissed and snapped at some little kids), so he is spending some time to think about his actions in this pretty cage.
I'm trying to incorporate a bit more solid inked areas in my prints. I know I have a tendancy to just carve, carve, carve and my prints turn out too white for my tastes. I really had to stop myself from carving more on this one.
This one with white ink on charcoal/navy paper is my first and probably favorite print with this block. I just love white ink, and I'm so excited about colored paper all of a sudden. I always prefer a white matte, so any of these with a white matte become a million times more dynamic than a print on white paper.
This one is for the little girl goose lovers out there. You know who you are.

Ahoy!

Ahoy mateys! This is my newest print. The name was so last minute, and it somehow makes me like the print a million times more. It can be fun to make little prints (this one is 5" x 7"ish) that aren't too serious and involved. And, I sell tons more small ones than I do large ones... So, I've got to give the people what they want (within reason, of course)!
Here it is scanned in, looking totally different for some reason.
Another new print is on the way. I just finished carving it but I haven't printed it yet. It involves a goose and a cage, so its bound to be amazing! I'm predicting lots of geese in the future of my prints. They are just so loud and goofy, especially when hissing.

where things begin

Last night I had a show at the Octopus Ink Gallery in downtown Anchorage. We took a few iPhone photos of the crowd:


I sent some photos of my prints to the Anchorage Press and hooray! they put one in the paper.

Caught & Free linocut prints

Last week I finished some new linocut prints. I wanted to make some larger-scale salmon (other salmon in prints I've made have been small-ish) and I thought salmon in a next would be fun.
Here is my initial sketch.
The carving process.
The carving, all finished.
Without the net- I'm calling this one "Free".
And "Caught". I like the print with and without the net, so I think I'll be printing some of each and seeing which people buy more of.