Yellows & Greens
8” x 10”
Hand-rubbed Relief Print
Limited Edition
I was inspired by a summer day’s harvest of yellow squash and tomatillos. It seemed like a good subject to try using the reduction process to create the image. With the reduction process, you continually cut away portions of the plate, which results in the plate having only the material left that prints the color, which in this case, was a grey-black.
With relief printing, there are many steps. It’s kind of scary, really, as you have to get to the end of the steps to determine whether the result is successful or not. I'm still learning the reduction process and my efforts are still a bit crude.
First I start with a drawing.
Then, I trace the drawing. When the image is transferred to the plate, the tracing is flipped so the image is backward.
I then strengthen the image on the plate. In the image below, I have cut away the areas I want to be white.
Here, I have printed a lighter and a darker yellow, plus a light green. With each pass, I cut away the part of the plate that printed the colors I want to keep. You are overprinting lighter areas with the next darker color.
It is really easy to accidentally cut away more than you planned to remove, which adds a level of challenge and excitement to the process. It's also difficult to capture the nuance of shape that you can with a drawing. Cutting shapes is tricky.
Even though I have a system to help register each printing pass, another issue is miss-aligning the paper to the plate when you transfer each color.
Below, I have printed a slightly darker green and a blue.
In the final image, you can see I printed the golden brown and then the gray-black.
Viola! I started with 14 sheets and ended up with 10 final prints. It's not just art, it's an adventure!
Viola!
