Intermission

In the middle of a marathon to finish the last three colors of the drive-in print, and thought I'd take a minute to talk about color.

Color is very important to me, as an artist and as someone who likes to eat and sleep under a roof (I'm an ink technician for a printing company by trade). I almost gave up on reduction printing a few years ago because I couldn't get the colors to do what I wanted them to (see http://nappingcat.blogspot.com/2010/04/fresh-print-doonagore-castle.html for an example). One can often tell a reduction print by the muted, muddied colors that are the result of colors affecting the colors printed over them. Instead of giving up, I've made it my mission to overcome this issue.

One of the things I do before starting a print is to get a good idea of the colors I will be using. I then mix some test colors, overprinting them to see how they play off each other. I use screen printing to do this step, so the results are not necessarily transferable to woodcut. But it does give me a pretty good idea of what I want the final color to look like. Once I start printing with a block, I usually print one or two extra pieces, so that I can use them as color proofs.

The picture to the right is my color palette for my next print. Any guesses on what the subject might be?