A bigger block. Working to find a balance in what the different layers do… here I thought I would keep the first two layers very simple and let the top layer do most of the work. Ends up being a bit thin on background… and a bit heavy on the final layer. Enjoying handling a bigger space.. just need to loosen up and play with it a bit more…
Poor photo… ink sheen and poor light at end of day… that and the slight misregistration makes it harder to see what is what. Trying to deal with the bigger picture. Learning something but not quite sure what yet.
With these earthier colours a sense of getting more into the realm I was after… The mossy greens predominated in reality but they can wait to come back in, if at all.
I’m including photos of studio end wall to give some kind of overview. I hadn’t mentioned the use of warmup prints (the little squares below the sparrowhawks). Not sure whether they are colour sample tests or abstract compositions but enjoyable and helpful to do.
2 more prints on this theme…
3 colour monoprint, block size 20.5 cm square
This a small scale image to see how I fared on a new theme. Staying with the same colours that I’d been using with the sparrowhawk.
Second of two more prints… on the same theme today… Seeing what happens as my grip on the real experience slips away.. Maybe a bit samey in my approach but unusual for me to be able to repeat the composition so many times…and I’m still learning about the printmaking approach.
3 colour monoprint, c. 50 x 40 cms
Managing to squeeze in another print… I usually try to avoid studio work at the w/e but feeling some increased confidence with the monoprints and not wanting to lose momentum. Still having trouble with the middle layer… in this case the press has pulled the grey off where it overlays the yellow leaving a more yellowy and tonally paler than I wanted… but sense of being happy to work with what happens rather than fighting it
3 colour monoprint c. 50 x 40 cms
Using the charged subject matter to look harder at this approach to monoprinting. There is only one shot at it … building the layers. Yellow then grey then the dark brown. All drawing in negative, scraping away at each layer of ink, leaving the blocks of colour corresponding to the anatomy of the birds. A slip in attention and some critical part will be cut away… and it is never the same re-rolling the ink… something about the integrity of that initial sheet of colour. There is only enough ink for one really strong print.
The layers are overprinted ‘wet on wet’ and there is a degree of repulsion.. a more oily layer repelling a less oily one… If there is too much ink then running it through the press can squash out finer lines… In this version I tried to cut down on the overlapping of inks but it hasn’t really made that much difference… Learning by doing