picasso linocut - thoughts

We were asked to review the prints by Picasso for part of our homework for Printmaking

Here is mine



Firstly I haven't looked at the name of this print or the others, nor the story behind them.

• I wanted to view it in terms of my own personal opinion
• I didn't want to be influenced by the meaning or terms behind it/them
• Its fun to guess, (usually I'm totally wrong)

The first thing I noticed was the woman's face seems to be drawn in a cubist style. She looks unhappy like she is tired and being weighed down by her clothes and jewels.

I like the colour (orche) and how in travels down through the image. It seems to have areas of bright yellow also. This seems like an under painting as it's not highlighting areas as such,
I do like how some of the underneath colours overlap or shine through. Im not sure if this was intended?




This one is interesting as a still life...For me these styles seem to have an tribal expressive nature about them. The contrast in colour I also enjoy. Something to consider in my own print is also an Analogous colour scheme, choosing one color to dominate, a second to support and the  third colour  used (along with black, white or gray) as an accent.
Surrealist and cubist and fauvism could all play maybe or identified and be connected...Almost like a mix of everything he has ever done! Compared to the photography style of Tom Davidson's work, I feel a more personal connection in the way the light/colour makes me feel when viewing Picasso's. While Tom's work looks very good it is very linear in landscape and difficult to say which deserves more appreciation. Tom for me, has a great ability to create light, shadow and detail but the free expression that Picasso's brings give in to a freedom I'd love to find within myself. Its not easy to let go of how you think something should look...and actual give yourself to something .....If that makes sense.



 



I'm not sure if it the colour, pattern that makes this print above to me look Spanish?



What a later found out about his linocuts surprised me in the facts that he was 80 when doing some linocuts and that he was the first to print from one block! The fact that every block was always printed individually from a number of blocks before I find a time consuming and complex wayof printing and can't believe a build up of printing hadn't been done before?

Facts

Picasso's linocuts were made by gouging out a sheet of linoleum which had been fused onto a harder block of wood.  (Linoleum, softer and lighter than wood, allowed Picasso to work more quickly than would have been possible by working from woodblocks alone.)  Using gouges, he would cut out the areas of his intended image that were to be absent of color (and therefore appear the color of the paper when printed).  The relief areas that remain would be inked, usually with a brayer.  Paper would be put on the inked linoleum block and pressure applied, after which the inked image is transferred to the paper.  If there were to be multiple colors, Picasso would create a separate linoleum block, each corresponding to a different color, each printed in succession.  This is how he worked since his first linocuts were created in 1958.

In later years he become more economical and ingenious, inventing the technique of printing multiple colors from a single linoleum block by printing the linocut, cutting out more of the block, inking it again and printing it a second time in a second color on the earlier printed single-color example, successively adding colors while continuing the process.