The lino block I've been carving for two weeks just tore clean in half
Right, so I'm two weeks into a block of a heron standing in the shallows, all that hatchwork around the water done, maybe three hours from being ready to proof, and the lino tears. Clean down the middle, right through the bird's chest. Not a crack or a chip. A catastrophic divorce.
I stood there holding the two halves for a good minute. Then I laughed, because what else are you going to do. The dog looked up at me to see if I was alright and decided I wasn't worth the effort, went back to sleep.
Two weeks. And the stuff I was using was perfectly good lino too, not cheap grey stuff, it just decided it was done with me.
The funny thing is, I kept both halves. I'm fairly sure there's a way to mount them and pull them as two pieces, but honestly I might just frame the block itself the way it broke, it's sort of brutal and lovely. Or use the heron's head half for a smaller print. Give it a chance to redeem itself.
Anyway. If anyone's got a method for rescuing a torn block, I'm all ears, but I'll warn you I've already talked myself into it being art. The missus says I'm a hoarder with a printing press. She's not wrong.
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Oh no. I felt that in my chest reading this, and I'm not even the one holding the two halves. Two weeks of hatchwork gone like that, right through the bird. I think the dog had the right idea honestly.
I know this sounds small but I'd take a photo of the two halves before you do anything with them. Not to post, just to keep. Sometimes I swear the failed ones teach me more than the finished ones, even if it takes a while to see it. And the heron will come back. They always come back, just never on our schedule.
What are you going to do with the pieces? Start a fresh block, or is there something salvageable in there? I'd need a few days to even look at the ruin before I decided anything. 🙂
The photo thing is real. I keep a folder on my phone of the disasters, the ones that died halfway, the ones I overworked into mud. I look at them more than the good ones sometimes. There's something in the failed ones that's more honest.
And yeah, the dog knew. Animals always clock it before we do. "You'll be fine, I've seen this before, wake me when it's dinner."
Two weeks of hatchwork though. That heron is going to haunt them for a while before they go again, but they will. We always do. That's the whole job, isn't it. Burn it all down, start over, pretend the last one didn't cost you something. 😭
The photo's a good shout, I'll do that before I do anything drastic. God knows I've got a whole graveyard of half-dead blocks on the shelf, I might as well have the paperwork on this one. There's something in it, you're right. When I finally carved the heron good, the one that actually worked, half of what I learned was from the three that went wrong before him. He's standing on the shoulders of dead birds, the poor fella.
And yeah, the dog had it right and all. She's got a whole PhD in keeping the head when things go sideways. She's seen me lose blocks, lose editions, nearly lose the run of myself one time, and she just stays on the mat, unbothered, like a wee buddha in a fur coat.
I reckon I'm not starting fresh tonight anyway. I'll let the anger settle for a day, then I'll carve the bastard again, bigger this time. If you're going to lose two weeks you may as well lose three.