I've got a new print going. Truthfully, I've been carving on it for a couple of weeks, and I've been kind of dreading dealing with the figures and not quite sure how it would go, so I've been doing a bunch of oils as well. I had proofed the underneath aqua block a couple of days ago, and yesterday I finally took a deep breath and carved the women fully and proofed the whole thing. There are definitely some things to fix, and I'm pondering a few white highlights on the statues (very thin) and a bit of light coming into the hedge (cutting down to the aqua block below in bits, especially up high). Since once you cut, you can't go back, I think I'll paint both options first on top of a proof and see if I really want that. But I'm feeling very relieved and happy about the way this one is going, and I'm so grateful about that.

Here's the original watercolor, done on site, sitting in gravel on site, and the underneath aqua block with it. I had to try to keep careful track of where the water spray bits were going so they would line up between the two blocks and show through to the white of the paper. There's a bit of room for movement in that kind of thing, but most of it worked nicely, which made me happy.

And here's a close up of the darker block as I was carving it last night. I've got a little way to go on this, but it's nice to be close.