A year of carving and a summer of linocuts

About one year ago I went and drove from one Flooring supply shop to the next until someone had some left over scraps of Marmoleum, Flooring Linoleum that they wanted to donate to me. Those scraps ended up being a huge roll with at least 15 yards in length. I promptly cut myself several 3x3 ft pieces off mounted them onto plywood with non-toxic contact cement and now they are ready to be carved.
When I create linocut I don't blacken the surface anymore, I will just create my drawing with permanent marker and while I carve I will decide what gets carved and what stays behind. 

Carving in our old apartment. 

Carving in my old studio

Proofing the first two big 3x3ft linos on the large Etching Press in NSCADs print department.

In the meantime I had left over scraps that I mounted to small 6x6 inch blocks, 12x12 inch blocks and 2 24x24inch blocks

Then we bought a house with a little backyard and moved into it early this summer. 

Now I get to carve outside. 

It's been a gorgeous summer in Dartmouth and I have spent as much of it outside as possible. Carving. 

These are little 6x6 inch blocks that I was proofing earlier in the summer: 

I am experimenting with combinations of the linos and figurative lithographs.
The lino pattern will have several tasks. They can stand on there own, they will become backgrounds or foregrounds of figurative works and they are going to be part of a huge installations project that I have been working on over the past 6 months. In the next two weeks I am going to print a proof of every lino I have carved in this series. It's going to be interesting. In the past I would proof or print before I started a new linocut, but with this series I have just been carving without seeing what the printed outcome will look like.