Mermaid Piece part 11

Ended up with some extra time today, so I made a stop at the Studio to continue on the mermaid piece.  However, today I left the block and tools at home (they are heavy to carry around if I don't need them) and did some experiments with color.

Back in June, as I was preparing for my first Belmar woodcut class in a few years, I checked out my storage container there in Belmar and discovered a nice assortment of water soluble relief ink.  A variety of colors, plus black.  I knew I had a supply somewhere, but looked in vain when I was preparing for classes in 2D and Intro last year.  Found it too late for college classes last year, but it was available for my summer woodcut class in Belmar this year, where some of my students paired it with colored papers from my supply of that stuff.

I expect to be doing some print projects with my college classes this fall, so some of it will get used there.  As of now I don't plan to make any traditional prints of my new mermaid block, but I can see taking some of my old rubbing style prints from it (for possible future use in some project) before I turn it in.  And once we decided to make it a color piece of sculpture, I realized that this ink would be the ideal material to use to color it.  It cleans up with water, can be applied with brush or brayer, comes in variety of colors, and is designed to sit on wooden surfaces...and I happen to have a bunch of it.  At least for now, as none of these are being manufactured any more.

Today I was working out my palette.  I knew that I needed a skin tone, hair color, tail color, starfishes, and shells.  For materials I had the following colors to work with:  white, black, blue, green, red, yellow.  Piece of cake.  I squeezed out a little of each ink onto some sketchbook paper, then used a paint brush to play with mixes.  I think these will work, but not until I finish all the planned sanding left on the block.