Not the Easter Bunny

Proofing continues.

I managed to print 3-4 color variants of my still-unfinished, Year of the Rabbit card.
I have the yellow block pretty much squared in and registration was satisfactory, if not perfect. I need to work on the ring over the Right eye and there was some unwanted embossing of the paper where I hadn't cleared the block well enough.

There is still to trim back or shim the red block--the red jewel is a bit out of registration...and there is a little general clean up to do as well on the rabbit block and the keyblock.

But I still think I have to play with the colors a bit and I'd like the gold rings to be a bit more visible...I may try some metallic ink. I touched in some gold gouache with a small paintbrush and I liked the effect but would prefer to print it.
HOPE to try printing later this week.....

Rabbits

Year of the Rabbit, 2011; Preliminary Sketch

It's been AGES since I did any carving and despite having Taxes and loads of other more important things to attend to I decided to get to work on my already late "Year of the Rabbit" cards.

My image was drawn from a nice photo of a jackrabbit on the web stylized a bit to allow for some easier carving and loosely drawn in a format that will suit a small postcard-sized image.

Sami, looking at this and the half-dozen earlier sketches had asked,
"Why don't you add an earring?" and the idea was planted and it was a good one.
This is the year of the METAL rabbit and multiple piercings are all the rage here in Santa Cruz, (Northern California) and elsewhere so this will be just perfect.

This image became the hanshita and I've just finished carving and proofing the keyblock. Next the proofs will get glued down to new boards to allow for the color blocks; I'm thinking probably four color blocks in addition to the keyblock.