Cross Roads Blues part 11/ Blood Draw part 19

 The unusual title today comes from having worked on two different blocks today, and doesn't include thinking about a third, but I'll save talk of that until I start that block.  No printing today, just cutting, but that's a big part of what I do.

Since my last visit to the Studio, I've had a bit of time to look at the resulting images of my two most recent blocks- a proof taken of the Cross Roads block, and a photo of the cutting on my Blood Draw block.  I came to the conclusion that there was more cutting I wanted to do on both before I try the next proof of each, so no printing yet.  Today was a good day to get up to the Studio and get some work done.  Once again I brought the pop/rock book of discs with me, and from that I selected a home burned compilation of songs from Shonen Knife, good high energy rock and roll to cut wood to.  I wrote about this disc back on July of 2019 if you want to know more about it.

First was the Johnson block.  Not many changes to be made here, but I did want to fix a few things, and everything can be seen on the photo below.  Most obvious is changes made to the bottle label- I redid some of the lettering, and cut out within a banner across the top of the label, and the seal design on the bottom left of the label.  Also made some minor cuts to the bottle itself, the arm holding the bottle, a button on the rolled up sleeve, and a few minor accidental marks that turned up in the proof.  There are more marks under that blue tape, but I think I took care of the things I wanted to.

Then I moved on to the larger block, my Blood Draw piece.  Some things I knew I wanted to do were put some kind of separation between the mask and a dark patch on the shoulder of the head to the far left, and I wanted to make lighter still the background of the whole piece.  While I had it there on the table with cutting tools out, I also made some slight changes to the other figure- hair, skin. and some on the other figure's hands.  Results can be seen in the photo below:

What I did today falls under the category of drawing with the tools.  I used various gouges to make more light lines in the inked (but dry) blocks, with the result that I could easily see the changes in the image by the newly exposed light color of the wood on the otherwise black inked block.  Unfortunately, this only goes one way, meaning I can only take away black, but I can't put it back.  On the other hand, it's a very quick and effective way of adjusting the balance of black, white, and gray in the image without needing to ink and print. 

I don't know if I am now done with either print, or if more cutting is necessary.  The only way to decide to keep looking at what I have and decide if I see more I want to remove.  I have some time, with no immediate or concrete deadlines for either piece, other than maybe wanting a proof to show to some visitors I expect to have in about a month.  Or to have for an open studio scheduled for about two months from now.  I have a lot of time between now and then.