Some months after finishing the inking work, the turtle print has finally reached completion. It was a delay that amazed with the problems encountered in finding somewhere to produce the A3 acetates to be used in exposing the screen. Fortunately my good friend Martin down in Falkirk came to the rescue with a suitable solution.
So once again, with Jono's generous assistance, I set about printing. Two variations this time. The first, in keeping with my original plan, featured the three basic primary colours of red, blue and yellow. The idea being that through overlapping I'd hopefully achieve the secondary colours of orange, purple and green. What I actually got wasn't quite as well defined as this but the results are none the less satisfying with clearly defined secondary colours... albeit not a direct match for those in my mind at the point of conception. And in the interests of the experiment I could have been a bit more liberal with the blending of the blue and the yellow in the pursuit of green. There are 24 of these, signed and numbered.
The second variation features purple, turquoise and copper and was purely an additional indulgence taken before washing out the stencils. A chance to play with the composition using a rather more earthy palette. The purple and the turquoise work beautifully and found compliment with the copper (having failed to agree with a pull of raw umber). As I'd hoped, I've learned a good few lessons with this design and can see how I can develop the work further. There are 21 of these, signed and numbered.
All in we spent about nine hours straight working on these prints... coating, exposing, washing, printing, washing, drying, coating, exposing and so on. It was a long cold exhausting day but very satisfying.
