Linocuts and umbrella people

Getting ready to do another handmade book. This one's going to be a mix of linocut, lithography, and possibly some screenprinting, along with some regular old pen and ink. I'm planning to experiment with layering prints on semi-transparent papers and mylar. It's nice to be working with linoleum again, I haven't used it in over a year. I've got about six lino plates in progress at the moment, here are three of the more finished ones - still got a bit of work to do on all of them, but they're almost done. I'll be proofing them within the next couple of days.




The narrative so far is fairly loose. I'm letting this one develop as I go rather than overthink it. There's a lot of stuff about rain and flooding in it, and these little umbrella people are back again - I first used one of them in my "Monster" book, but the image started popping up in my sketchbooks a couple months before that. It comes up most often when I'm trying to describe anxiety and confusion, possibly because it's a figure that hides itself behind something else.

Edit: Wow, I just found a notebook of mine from 2007 with couple of early versions of this umbrella image. Guess it's been around longer than I had thought.

Work in progress - comic

Been playing with an idea for a comic, here's the first two pages (which will probably be redone). I've always liked the image of people with their feet encased in concrete. This guy got dumped in the desert instead of the lake. Apologies for the weird tonal quality, I need to get myself a scanner.

More sketches

Another prep sketch and two doodles.

Sketches

Here's a few preparatory sketches for a drypoint etching: