Making a Relief Print - continued 6

Once you are happy with the basic print, it is time to decide if the artwork is complete, or if you will be adding color.

For multiple-color printing, a new block would need to be carved for each of the new colors to be added.  The purest form of this is a four color separation.  Red, blue, yellow and black plates would be cut that only print one of each of these four colors.  Planning is essential so that a purple surface would be carved to deposit both red and blue ink on the same paper surface.  The amount of transparency calculated in the ink colors determines the tone of the entire range of colors; the black ink determines the shade.

While I am very intrigued by the four-color printing process, for the time being (and perhaps forever,) I will be printing in one color and adding colors by hand.  Because I also want the added colors to dry non-water-soluble, I have focused on Inktense pencils, FW acrylic inks, and acrylic paints.  While I appreciate the range of colors watercolor paints can provide, they are always reactivated with water; each time water is added, they have the potential to move and change.  Gouache, an opaque watercolor medium, presents the same reactivation issues.

Hand painted iris print  - Printing ink:  Daniel Smith black.  Color added with FW acrylic inks.

One of the advantages of the printing and hand-painting process, is the opportunity to make one image into a variety of final products by changing the colors used for printing, and or painting.  In the iris, for example, a pale lavender iris in the southern spring border, can become a golden yellow iris in the summer garden.

Iris print - Brown Ranger ink and FW acrylic ink.

Notice that not only are the hand-painted colors different, but the printed color is also different from the first print to the second print; both printed from the same block.