Watercolor on a Polylitho Print
This is a combination of colored pencil and watercolor on a polylitho print. It is from the a limited print edition of “Watching”. I have completed several of these prints based on a simple line drawing of a lone figure in a stark landscape.
I was not enthralled (lovely word!) by the virulent (!) green & blue of the watercolors on this print. So I softened these a bit with colored pencil, displayed top left below. It was one more interesting experiment. Of course the heavy soft etching paper I used really soaked up the watercolor!
And then of course you can see the digital magic. I applied digital technology to both this watercolor painted version of “Watching”, and also to a softer, less colorful print from this edition.
The scan of my watercolor paint & colored pencil print is the first image, top row left. On the top right, more colorful again, is a modified foil enhancement of the print at left. But on the second row, I got a bit negative!
On the lower row, at left, you see the negative of the foiled print above. The purple is vile, but I like it! And we all feel a bit negative at times, surely?
I did a bit more digital work to balance the intensity and contrast. The thought occurred that more could/should be done, perhaps. I switched to working with a negative of the scanned image, rather than using the foiled version, and that is the last image in the gallery view below.
For my second dip into the negative, I started with a less colorful version of “Watching”, tinted with colored pencil mostly in sand tones. This resulted in the mostly blue, blue, blue image! Of course this has additional digital work also to enhance the touch of greens and purple in the aurora borealis…
The final image, bottom right, is yet another colored print. I used metallic pen for some highlights, and metallic colored pencil in addition to some “normal” colors. Then I added a second figure: a negative and flipped version of the original.
I don’t think I need to try watercolor on a polylitho print again, but I’ll never stop using digital magic!
