Hello Friends,

I really enjoy doing prints of night scenes. There have been half a dozen or so that I've completed over the years. This particular print started as an oil painting I did in 2008 in my last years of painting with oils. This scene is the coast of Nova Scotia at a beautiful place that was near our home in Liverpool called Summerville Beach.

"Summerville Tide", oil on canvas, 38" x 28"

I made some significant changes to the composition.

The first linoleum block for "Starlight Shoreline"

Because this is a night scene I wanted the colors to be deep. In order to achieve that I printed most of the first three impressions twice. Here are the first four of five impressions. (The photos are not the best - sorry about that.) The fourth impression is using an additional block, carved for everything but the sky. The final impression uses the same colors as the previous block to pull it all together.

The last two impressions were applied using three semitransparent colors. The purpose of these layers was to unify the color in the image. And here's the final print:

"Starlight Shoreline" linocut print, 12" x 9" (31 x 23.5)

I like the way this print came out. It has a lovely, warm atmosphere to the scene. There's the suggestion of a mist over the water that partly obscures the island on the horizon. I didn't count the stars but I know there are quite a few.

One of the things that is interesting to me about doing night scenes is that our eyes are unable to see color at night, only black and white. People often remark that my work is very realistic and that's true. However, working with a night scene, all of the colors I use are imaginary. Besides that, I don't have any black ink in my supplies. Really! The colors in this prints are all blues and greens. Even the darkest of the colors is not black but a dark blue-violet.

Here are some of my night scene prints from the past to show you a range of possibilities in the colors I use.

"Moonlight Lead", "Island Universe", "In For The Night", "Twilight Village", "Coastline Nocturne"

And so we are ending 2025 on a high note. We hope that you too will find your winter warmed with the love of family and friends. Let me hear from you and if you find yourself in Western Massachusetts, get in touch and come have a visit to my studio.

William H. Hays