Smoking Figure part 32

Cutting the value/texture into all those bricks will be tedious, but it's pretty simple. The large white areas to the right of the window and by the cornerstone will be even easier- just cutting out everything but the black line shapes. The last complex area to start cutting was the window, and that's what I decided to work on today.

The large letters were cut out completely- they'll be white in the final version. All the other shapes represent either reflections seen on the glass or architecture seen through the glass, and are derived from the ink wash block drawing, which in turn was based on various location sketches and observations. (the identity of those items isn't important, just wanting an interesting and plausible combination of value shapes) For this part of the block I'm going to stick with the vertical shading and so I spaced my lines based on the values from the wash drawing. As with other recent cutting days, I rolled a tiny bit of black ink on afterwards so that I can get a better idea of how this will all look. The results of today's work can be seen above.

Like with the other days of cutting value, I know I will go back in later and remove some more. That large black shape (behind the big R) is far too bold, standing out too much for something that I want to act as background. (it was a bit more subtle with the ink wash) I'll keep it a dark shape, just break it up with a few key lines here and there. And I will likely lighten some of other shapes to push the value range just a little wider, but that will wait until I've had a first pass at cutting the bricks. The current state of the whole block can be seen below.

My goal is to finish the whole thing by next weekend, so that I'll have a shot of getting an acceptable print to submit to the upcoming BAC Art on the Edge show. I ordered an appropriately large frame, and have big paper and matting materials in the Studio. I'll hold off on ordering the plexiglass until I see how things turn out and if I stay on schedule.