I've been exploring the Narrative Landscape series for a minute now. Sometimes my interests wander somewhere else and I might not make another piece for a month or two. Even though it's still my own brain and hands making the work, the pieces exhibit different colorways and line qualities that just don't truly feel like they're part of one continuous thought.

And so began an ambitious sidequest: multiple scenes from one imaginary cartoon.

I was walking past the convention center here in OKC and saw these funky tree-looking structures that got my imagination going. And I happened to have a pile of empty Girl Scout Cookies boxes leftover from cookie season, so I built a little world with its own angular architecture. The buildings were arranged into scenes, then lit and photographed in my garage.

Reduction was the move on this piece: I didn't want to buy 4 separate blocks for each layer, which could get pricey. Reductions feel kinda scary because they're so permanent, but it felt kind of freeing to just roll with it.

I also spent a lot of time determining my color scheme and ink mixes ahead of time. Watching a LOT of color mixing videos on social media because I've never felt super strong at color. But I'm happy with how it turned out.

This is just Part One in the series, but it was a good first run.     
I did royally screw up and carve away a huge section of dark, but oh well. It makes it a little more interesting if you ask me.    
(That was really hard to say, btw...)

Hope y'all enjoy!

"Narrative Landscape No. 8"    
Color linocut, 11" x 14"

Narrative Landscape #8