Deer Print part 2

Right now my biggest problem with this new print I am working on is what to call it.  The piece it is derived from has a title, but this is really a separate piece, and will look even more so when it is finished.  So for now on this blog I will just call it the Deer Print, and figure it out some time before the piece is finished.

Today was sunny, but still very cold, not a good day to do yard work, but suitable for Studio work, an indoor activity.  So that is where I went this afternoon after lunch.  With me I brought a new pencil, a 3B that came with a large set of pencils I got as a Christmas gift. I know from experience that the softer pencils make darker marks on wood, which will make the results more visible and the dark/light balance more visible. Also grabbed some discs from the shelf. I'm going to need some heat down there today, so music loud enough to compete with our heating unit.  (Molly seems to still be on vacation, so I had the place to myself and could enjoy music) First up was the Screws Get Loose album from Those Darlin's, who I first noticed when their debut album came out and an article I read mentioned they had formed in Murfreesboro, TN, which happens to be the hometown of my music friend Doug. That first album was traditional country, which I guess didn't interest him, but when the second album came out (more a girl group sound, which is fine because it was founded by 3 women) he sent me a copy of it, which I liked enough to get an official copy, which came with bonus tracks.  But they changed sounds again before the third album, and one of the band's founders left, and then after the 3rd record the lead singer died in her 20's from a form of cancer, so there will be no more albums. For the second music selection I went way back- a collection of live tracks from the Jam, called Dig The New Breed. (How far back? The last release for the Jam was one of the first videos on MTV.)  These songs were recorded at various venues between 1977 and 1982 (roughly their existence), when they were one of the premier bands of the British Mod movement. Still holds up.  When that ended I switched to something very different, the debut album from 24-7 SPYZ.  First came out when I was a college senior, an all black hard rock band from New York, signed on the heels of Living Colour hitting it big.  I remember a college music magazine with an ad promoting the still unknown band referring to their debut album, Harder than You , as "Van Halen meets Run-DMC on a corner in the South Bronx."  Probably not far off.  The band was scheduled to play a free show at Montclair State, but at the start time they had not arrived.  I left to host my radio show, walked back out later, and they still weren't there, but had been replaced with Meatloaf. Not what I was in the mood for.

I had worked out the basic composition yesterday, so today I was fixing details and filling in some dark shapes with my darker pencil.  (doesn't really impact the print, but just to be a guide when I go to start cutting the shapes and may need a reminder of what is black, what is white, what is gray.   The one things I didn't want to do was draw in the details of the towering cranes, as my only source in the Studio was a small photo and I couldn't see enough detail. I'll sketch that from the original print and bring it in next time.  So far so good, but that's not surprising as it was always a good print and so far it's a pretty close copy of that, just slightly smaller.