Adventures in linocut

I just completed my first ever reduction linocut. Here's the plate with the image drawn on in sharpie and just the areas I wanted to be white cut out.

And here are the first two colors I printed.

The pink was first, then I cut away more of the block and printed with the blue. I had quite a bit of trouble getting the pink to print well and in the end found out that I hadn't sanded my block enough.

I added a lighter green, cut away more of the block and then did the darker green. The colors dry lighter so at first I thought I might stop at this point, but later decided to go ahead with black as I'd intended.

This is the final print. I learned so much doing this - about the right viscosity of the inks (I used a mixture of Akua intaglio inks and Speedball block printing inks along with a couple of different mediums), about the importance of precise registration, about my chosen brand of lino and about the press at Makers' Mill in North Adams where I did the printing. It took a few days because of waiting for the inks to dry completely between stages. Here's a shot of the great drying rack they have over there. 

It's a lot of fun as well as a little nerve wracking not being sure how things will turn out in the end. I came away with 11 prints, but they're all a little different from each other.