Mermaid Piece part 14

I had business in Ocean Township today, and decided to divert to the Studio to continue work on the Mermaid print.  The block and tools were already in my car, the inks and more tools and the early stage prints already in the Studio, and I had maybe an hour to spare.  Time to get a little more done.

I had left the two prints in progress in the Studio, and found them to still be little bit wet.  When water based ink is printed it tends to dry pretty quickly, but the process of printing results in a very thin layer of ink, while this rolling system I was using leaves thick layers sometimes.  Mixed yellow, red, and white to make a pale orangish color and used that to do the starfish, and straight white for the  sand dollar and scallop shell bikini, most of which was applied with a brush, due to the small size of the items.  Still using the block underneath to make the shapes.  Added a layer of green (with some yellow and white) on top of the tail, this time with a hard brayer to accentuate the carved shapes.  The next step will be to put the light layer of hair on top, but there's too much wet ink up there to do that today.

A little more color has found it's way through the paper and onto the block, but the block will be colored eventually with the same colors, so this isn't a problem.  I'll leave all the prints in the Studio to dry and maybe see if they are ready to be continued next week.