President Maret and the First Lady spent an afternoon with me on Lake Pepin during their recent tour of the midwest. Mr Maret caught the only fish of the day, a 15-inch White Bass (Morone chrysops). A couple of days later, I returned to the same spot and found a mother load of morel mushrooms.
Meanwhile, reductions of both the key block and the water block of the Redhorse have been cut. I decided to print the reduced key block first, before the reduced water block, because I felt I could capture detail better on top of one layer of ink, rather than two.
I had already mixed the second water color, and had added opaque white in order to obscure a little problem I had while laying down the first water color. So, the reduction cut of the key block was printed in black. It went well, but when I tried printing the reduced water block over it, the opaque white tended to obscure the very detail I had hoped hoped to feature in the key block. I decided to cut away more of the second water block in order to show more of the detail of the fish. I started by cutting out the iris of the eye, as it is the primary focus of the image, and needs to be deep, like a well. Having cut the iris, it’s darkness seemed too isolated.
I thought about filling it back in with epoxy, and remixing the ink without any opaque white, but it then occurred to me that the opacity might mimic the milky reflection of light off the top of the fish, something I had been aware of, but hadn’t thought to attempt: my problem had become an unexpected opportunity. I began cutting away more and more of the second water block where it overprinted the fish. This was very difficult to do for two reasons: first, I had already cut each individual scale four times, and I was tired of it; second, when I proofed the key fish image onto the water block for reference, it was black on black, and I could only make out the detail by turning the block at an angle to the light. It’s a big block, and this was awkward: even when the angle of light was just right, the detail was extremely difficult to see. To make matters worse, what was being cut away from the block appears light, but in fact becomes dark on the printed image, as the obscuring opaque white is not present.
The fine black lines on the eyeball were actually cut as white lines in the reduced water block.