"Four Seasons" final colors

I added the final few colors to the print project I'm working on today, and finalized the reduction woodcut "Four Seasons."

Earlier this week, I added a dark brown:


Over this, I added a dark green. The brookies finally swim free!



After two days of drying time, I added what became the final color: a deep, dark blue.

I had originally wanted to print a lighter dark blue, and then finish up with black. I decided my blue ink was too bright straight out of the can, and decided to tone it down a bit with orange. I over compensated, and came up with "nearly" black. I added the rest of the can of blue to this mess, and was able to come up with a very dark blue. It printed over the other colors dark enough to call "black", and printed around the snowflakes light enough to call "blue."

Brilliant!

"Four Seasons" (final)

As with all my prints, there is a certain level of "mortality": because these are hand done, I bothced a few.



The biggest culprit with this print was keeping a handle on the registration of all those colors. The darker the colors get, the worse a mis-alignment shows. With the lighter colors, you can get away with a mis-aligned print or two, but when printing near-black, even the slightest shift will show horribly. One of the rejects above was caused by a stupid, half crazed housefly that landed on my ear as I flipped the block/paper over to burnish it. With another, I coughed as I laid the inked block onto the image... after starting with 24 sheets of paper, 18 prints total made it all the way through to the end.

These rejects will be ceremoniously burned later this winter.