Smoking Figure part 24

Each day hotter than the last around here, so once again I made my visit to the Studio earlier than usual today. I aimed both standing fans in my direction and it was tolerable. Went straight into cutting, with the goal of finishing the head and neck. Cut out the white shapes first, since they are the most obvious. The above photo shows how it looked at that point. Then I went back and started cutting gray tones into some of the remaining dark shapes, based on the different values of ink wash in the block drawing. The photo below is from after the second step, and some slight differences are visible.

I didn't decide what to do about the eyes yet, but otherwise I accomplished what I wanted to do in about 2 hours. I won't know how well the various value tones work until I ink the block, and that's not going to happen until the whole thing is cut and that's at least weeks away. If all goes well, only minor adjustments will be needed between the first inking and the final print.