Moving slowly along…
Impression 12 – oops.
In carving around the little blue flowers, I removed what I should have left. And I did the same thing in the tulip leaf. So there’s a white shape where there should be a little blue flower. I thought maybe I could dab it in, but that didn’t look right. So I found a block left over from an old print that had empty space there in that position, and carved a little patch. I’m going to have to print that patch on every print before I do the tulip leaf.
Here's the Before, where it needs the patch.
Impression 11 – And here’s the After, patched. The final black outlines should cover up the darker areas where the color overlaps, and make the patch nearly invisible. If it all lines up right.
This is the recycled block, with the little patch bit surrounded by a paper mask. I put this mask over the block after inking, so that any smear of ink won’t get onto the print. Even when wiped away, some ink can transfer, and I don’t want any chatter here!
Since the patch was so small, it didn’t take very long to print all 34 papers. I was able to do the next color the same day. And here it is – impression #12 – with the first layer of green on the tulip leaf.
Impression 13 – The second layer of green on the tulip leaf.
The next one was tricky. I want dark red, but how to mix it? When I added black, it turned brown. And dull. I did some googling, and learned that, yes, adding black to bright red makes it darker, turns it brown, and also “kills the brightness” of the red tone. I decided to try adding blue, which the info says will make it darker, and purplish, but retain the redness and brightness better. They were right. I ended up using Napthol Red mixed with Prussian Blue. I printed the little bottle first. It needs a brighter area, shading to a dark hue that should be a close match for the background behind the tulip. And I ended up printing the whole thing in one run. That is, for each print, I first printed the bottle in solid red (Napthol Red plus a little Prussian Blue). Then immediately, with a different brayer, I added the shading to the block and printed again. Didn’t have any problem printing over the wet ink. Here’s the solid red, first layer:
Impression 14:
Impression 15 – and here it is with a bit of shadow.
I have a lot of that dark red mixed up. It should be enough for the next run, to fill in behind the tulip and the blue flowers. Adding a dark background should really make that tulip glow!
Oh – and here’s the url for that .pdf with the color mixing info. I’ve saved it to my “Printing” folder on my own computer, and also bookmarked it. It was very helpful.
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