Carrying on with the small full-colour monotypes that I did a few days ago. It was hard work being on my feet for hours on end. The lightbox is too high to sit down to work into the plates and I prefer to stand anyway; it’s a physical thing and I think my mark-making is better when I’m standing. Something to do with posture maybe? I’m working in sweeping gestures with rags and scrim (tarlatan) onto the inked perspex plate. I’m trying to get an expressionistic feel to my landscape studies from Pakistan, quite different to the anatomical details of my nudes.
The slides show the first pressing from the yellow plate, the second with magenta overlaid and the final full colour print after the cyan plate has been printed, giving a range of colours from very dark blues, purples and greens to pale pinks, yellows and oranges. You have to know your colour theory to work with this medium. There is more detail about the method on my website here.
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Oh, forgot to say, love the print! And your little film of it 🙂
Printmaking is physical, isn’t it Rosie! Sitting here taking breaks from rocking a mezzotint plate: can’t do it all in one go or I’ll do myself a nasty (as my granny would have said).
I am intrigued that you print yellow first, then magenta, then cyan. I would have thought that you would finish with yellow, it being the weaker colour? At least, when I paint in layers I put down the blue first, but your inks might react differently…
Hi Nancy, mezzotint rocking Ooooof! This particular technique uses the colours in that order as the blue layer is the one where you draw in your detail. The yellow would be too weak to carry it. Also, the inks are translucent and the colour combinations don’t seem to work as well with the colour sequence reversed. I’m enjoying exploring landscape with this process, exciting. Glad you like it ☺
Ah I see, yes that all makes perfect sense now Rosie!
Mezzotint not quite so hard work on Aluminium – at least not the burnishing bit of it – never tried rocking copper, only burnishing ready-made plates. Finer detail though.
Oh yes, I forgot you work on aluminium. Much softer. You get a great effect from it 🙂
Thanks! 🙂