Illustration Friday: Journey

I'm a truck girl. I love old pick-up trucks. My old orange GMC took me on many journeys across the country. The truck I have now is a beautiful blue 1984 Dodge. I haven't driven very far in this truck- just fun drives into the country, trips to the dump, and the daily drive to work. Here is a little stamp I made of my truck.

This is a stamp I made and painted with watercolor. The red dump truck is Lucky, a character in my first picture book dummy. Lucky is based on my husband's real-life dump truck. That truck is so fun to ride in. It's bouncy, you sit way up in the air, and it's loud and scary when you dump boulders.

Here is an earlier stamp I made of Lucky and also painted with watercolor. Lucky has gone through many transformations. In this version his bed is sort of brown. I like the black and red I finally came up with better.

This is a stamp of my first pick-up truck. She was a 1972 GMC and I named her Bessie. I had Bessie for 18 years! Unfortunately a big Suburban with a bad driver smashed her so badly that she had to retire. She carefully protected my husband who was driving, though.

Here is a picture of Bessie I made after she um.... passed on.

And here we are, back at the very beginning of my printmaking journey which is obviously closely tied to my truck journey. This is my very first ever linocut. I made this print in 1995 by carving the linoleum with a razor blade. (I do NOT recommend it.) I think I printed it with acrylic paint and no roller.
I was commemorating the fact that Bessie's odometer had just turned over to all zeroes for the first time. I guess it's not really a birthday exactly, but surely an important event. I don't know why I chose this to carve for my first linocut. But do remember that I had so much fun I went right out and bought proper carving tools, a roller and real printing ink. Every journey has to begin somewhere!