In my last blog post I mentioned my slight unsuccessful day trying to print the background to the print below but as you can see in the image below I have achieved it this week! It took a long time of trial and error and a lot of printing on newsprint but I got there. I achieved it by using a lot of extender ink and a touch of brown ink and then blue ink just to give it a cooler tint against the warmth of the paper and the portrait.
To print I rolled up the stone with this ink mixture and printed twice on newsprint without rolling up but still dampening the stone in between and then on the third print I printed onto the actual portrait. This along with the use of extender gave it the faded, aged quality I was looking for, it allows for the portrait to be the focus of attention but the symbols are still apparent and representative to the viewer of the person in the portrait.
This image above is the first of my finished prints for my exhibition.
I printed many times on newsprint but also before doing the final print I practiced directly onto scrap bits of the tan paper so I could see exactly how the colour would look. Some of these attempts came out to dark or with not enough blue tint in them but I kept trialling and eventually I got there.
These above were samples of the ink I mixed with the extender so that I had a record of the colour I would need to achieve again for the next portraits. The colour nearest the bottom was extender mixed with a slightly bit of sepia and then I kept adding blue to achieve the top colour which gave it that cooler tint.Then printing this on the tan paper gave the perfect amount of balance between the blue and sepia tones.
Now I have worked out the best approach to printing these, I can repeat this with my other portraits in my exhibition.
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