Morning on the Paint - a long time coming

I finished this one up today.

I was fishing with Joe, Grizz and Todd on the Paint a few years ago. It was the first time in recent memory for me fishing in the UP, and we were fishing to especially fussy brookies during an early morning trico hatch. I think I might have caught one or two (where I should have caught dozens), and so it was an especially frustrating morning. I had hung it up for awhile, maybe even sat down on a rock midstream to watch my friends downstream do their own fishing, when someone nodded to me in that way that made me turn and look upstream. There was a whitetail doe, cautiously picking her way along the bank, not far away.

I started a print of the scene immediately that fall, but as I worked my way through the blocks, something was lost, and I eventually put them away. From time to time over the next couple of years I'd pick them back up and try something new: a new paper, a different color, etc, always putting them aside and working on something else.

I picked them up again a couple weeks ago, and the answer was obvious: what the blocks needed was just a little bit more carving and just one or two additional color layers.

Here's a proof of one of the last runs I did:


You can see where I drew in a line of birch trees to cut out and a line of grass to add. I also printed it on brighter paper and adjusted the colors a bit.

Here's the finished print again: