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After achieve a series of 4 final lino prints I considered the possibility of bringing colour to my pieces. I really like the monochrome aesthetic but wanted to create some variations.
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Ideally I would experiment with adding spots of lino colour, however this would take a lot of trial and error in the print room, and with the time remaining I decided i just need to mock up my ideas digitally.
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I found this a lot more challenging than I initially anticipated. I thought i would add some simple blocks of colour and that would make the image pop - but in many cases it seemed to detect from the quality of the lino.
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successes and failures. - where i tried colouring different sections of the lino - it broke the image up too much and the lines just didn't flow the same at all. - adding spots of colour - again it seemed to detract away from the quality of lino - even just adding a couple of colours seemed to overcomplicate the image and disrupt the composition. - I started making progress when I stuck to applying one colour - using various tones helped to give the piece depth, but the one colour kept it from becoming too busy and crowded. - I think one of the main reasons which I like the black and white so much is the stark contrast between the black graphic line and background. It really helps to extenuate the details.
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Next I played around with the gradient tool. I have used this before not not quite as successfully - i discovered that theres a lot more you can control when creating a gradient in photoshop than i previously thought. By altering the settings you can achieve different levels of intensity, graduation of gradient and angle.
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I think overall I achieved some success with these colour combinations. - the like black and white, the colour works really well against a stark background to accentuate the details.
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I think perhaps the colours I chose were too bright and and their lacking some of the bite that the black and white pieces convey. I want to try creating a gradient where black is the predominant shade fading into a colour. - black and red?
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Ultimately I think that I will keep my lino prints black and white for the end of year show as i feel that is the most in keeping with the ancient greek theme and when the pieces look their most eective.