Original Photo

This is the photo I've chosen to use for making a reduction carving. A reduction carving is when you reduce the image to 2-10 colors and carve a separate block for each color. You then stamp them, beginning with the lightest color, building up to the darkest color. The trickiest part is getting them to line up perfectly (this is called the registration). I've played around with this photo using different color reductions to see what would be the best version for my project.

 

Edit: Okay, I wasn't exactly correct in calling it a reduction carving. A reduction carving is when you carve a block, stamp that color and then carve away additional *on the same block* and stamp that, working from lightest to darkest color. The bad thing about this is that you need to make as many prints as you will want because once you carve away for the next color, you can't make more. What I am doing is actually a *multi-block* print, where each color is its own carved block and they get stamped progressively, much in the same way.

Done