Smoking Figure part 28

Went back to the block this afternoon, and after consulting my various reference photos, finished cutting the skirt and a small visible piece of the leg on the right, as shown above. Once again I put off cutting the tattoo. I'm thinking lately that I want something smaller and less obtrusive. I want to finish everything involving the figure before tomorrow's critique group, so I'm going to try to make a decision on the tattoo by early tomorrow, and cut it in the afternoon.

Also in preparation for the crit, I decided to roll a touch of black onto the figure parts of the block. Thanks to bold applications of drawing ink and wash used to sketch the clothing, when those areas were cut, you got a good sense of how it will eventually look when printed. On areas of skin (especially the face) I had used a lighter touch with the ink wash, so after the first round of cutting, tone areas were still also light in value. Knowing that would change when the block is inked, I figured it was a good time to see what is actually there. Using just enough water based black ink to coat the brayer, I carefully rolled ink onto all parts of the block that included the smoker's body. The results are below.

The only part that looks really different now is the face, where all the shadowed areas are now much darker in value than they were with just the diluted india ink. I plan to remove some of this soon, to bring the values a little closer to what I saw, but not too much. The whole composition has to balance, so the facial shadows may not seem as dark when the window and bricks are cut and inked.