Season Ain't Over yet

Was up early this morning, so I took care of turning my large piece of paper into many small ones- 9 card sized pieces and a few scraps too small for a card.  Packed up as much other stuff as I thought I could use, and got up to the Studio.

First step was to finish the cutting of the block.  Very detailed work, taking a little longer than I expected, but I got through it and it looked good.  Took a break to talk to building management about some stuff we had discussed a few days ago, then on to the inking.  Had enough paper to print all the planned copies, but also had to make sure of what I had first.  Somewhere I have more ink and brayers, but haven't been able to figure out where they are yet.   Luckily I had packed my last new can of ink, and I had some brayers in the printmaking bad I had brought.  Decided to test things out on some of the scrap pieces first-  large enough to print the relief image, but not large enough to be the whole folded card.  There were a few issues, some related to the stiff paper, some because this was the early printings.  And I didn't really like any of the brayers I had, which either gave me not enough ink or too much.  Well, the practice ones will have use when I am practicing colors in a few days.

So far the piece is kind of dark.  My source piece is set at night, so that's not a total surprise. And the overall balance of light and dark feels fairly accurate. However, the three figures in the image all seem too shadowed.  I know what they are, but new viewers may not see them properly, even after I color them.  I think the only solution is cut out more of their images, so there will be less black printing, but right now the block is still quite inky.  Blotted it a few times, and I'll let it dry overnight, so maybe it will be less messy to cut tomorrow.  Maybe a different paper- something with a softer surface, but still heavy enough to be a card.  I may have something available in my collection of supplies, enough to get a prototype for Christmas Day.  In any case, I decided not to try any more card printing until I figured out where to go with this, or to proof the St Dwynwen print yet, since that's not needed for a few months yet. Meanwhile, took everything home to consider in the evening.
And left some other heavy print paper sheets to flatten out overnight.