Nessy Designs: "Los Gatos" Linocut Print

I first met my friend Christina at a Cincinnati Illustrators lunch. Christina ran the lunches and is a tremendously talented illustrator (check out her website here). Before I knew it she had convinced me to fly with her to Denver and then drive down to Taos for a travel journal workshop by Amy Bogard. It was quite an adventure and I had an incredible time.

“Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you;
spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.”
– Amy Poehler

Both during and since that trip I have gotten to know Christina. In addition to her incredible talent, she is one of the most open-hearted, non-judgmental, kind people I know. She has also influenced me (and many others) profoundly as an artist. I've learned so much from simply sketching next to her and peering over her shoulder to see how she illustrates a building, or a hippo, or a friend. She is always encouraging and genuinely wants success for her fellow artists and has the tendency to pull others up with her. I want to be more like that.

But back to the story at hand, last weekend Christina and Troy and their friend Misha invited me over for a belated birthday hotpot dinner. Misha spent time in China and to be invited to hotpot is quite a treat! Everything goes into the pot...enoki mushrooms, fishballs, noodles, bacon, bok choy, some kind of delicious root, and more that I am forgetting. So delicious!

That night Christina gave me an adorable owl tea towel and mug by SKT ceramics. She knew I would love them because we named our cats Bubo and Otus after two different owl genera (Bubo virginianus and Otus asio). In addition she illustrated the gift bag with a drawing of Otus smelling daffodils! So dang cute! Plus Troy 3-D printed me a mini watercolor palette.

“Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it.
I've never done anything for you.'

'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte.
'That in itself is a tremendous thing.”

― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

That night I realized Christina's birthday was the following week, so I took a few photos of her cats thinking I might make something cat-related for her . When I met Christina and Troy they had two cats...Miffy (above center) and Spike. Spike passed away recently and they adopted two new cats...Conan (above right) and Bob. Unfortunately Bob died after only a few months. Conan kept trying to play with senior cat Miffy and she was having none of it. So they recently adopted Thundarr (another orange tabby boy - above left).

“One cat just leads to another."

[Letter from Finca Vigia, Cuba, to his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1943).]

― Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters 1917-1961

The Sketch

The Monday after our dinner I sat down to sketch out ideas for a linocut. I knew I wanted to make it a standard size so I drew a 5x7 box. At first I thought I would just draw Christina with the three cats. Once I finished, I realized it would be more of a square with just her. So I added her husband Troy in the background (below left). I ended up liking Troy's sketch and wanted to keep him, but the composition was all wrong. So I scanned my sketch and brought it into Photoshop to play around with it. I thought about adding Christina's mom, but in the end I moved Troy to the middle and added some games/books (below middle).

At this point I got out a 5x7 mat and realized the opening is only 4 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches. This happens to me EVERY single time. I also realized that I should leave room at the bottom for my signature. So I drew a new box and scrunched everybody in (below right). I also like to have my subject matter break the border line a bit, so it really helps to work it out ahead of time in Photoshop.

I also had a fantasy that maybe I would make this a 4 color print. I figured I would need black, light orange, dark orange, and green for the chair. For those of you who aren't printmakers...adding printed colors to the background makes it a lot more complicated. Your registration has to be perfect and you have to use multiple blocks. It was a big decision so I decided to mock it up in Illustrator.

Below you can see my Illustrator drawing. I am glad I went to the extra trouble to do this step because I realized I would need five colors! (I was missing the blue before). That was the final straw and I decided to just add color to the black and white print using watercolor. It is much much easier and I thought I could still achieve the look I desired, which was flat fields of color.

With that decision made I moved on to transferring my design to the block. Here you can see my pencil sketch on the left which I turned over and burnished onto my Safety-Kut lino block on the right.

It took me almost 2 hours to carve the block. Of course Bubo had to come over to investigate what I was up to.

The following video shows me pulling a quick test print using a stamp pad. Again, there is a special guest appearance.

(Music by Scott Holmes: Amber)

I let the ink dry for two days and then I added color with watercolors. Watercolor works really well with oil-based ink because the ink repels the water and forces the color to stay inside the lines.

“Madame Lefoux accepted a cup of tea and sat on another little settee, next to the relocated calico cat. The cat clearly believed Madame Lefoux was there to provide chin scratches. Madame Lefoux provided.”

― Gail Carriger, Changeless

I pulled three prints, but the first two had tiny "errors" that I corrected. So I essentially only had one good print. This added a little stress as I was painting because I knew I couldn't mess it up. Luckily I did not. Below you can see my messy drawing board with shutter stencils behind the prints.

I framed the print in a simple black frame with a nice thick mat. Again, Bubo had to come check out the final print and give Miffy and the boys a sniff. He also provides a good size reference for the piece.