I was really interested to learn this week about the ability to split colour channels on photoshop. I had not known how to do this previously and was surprised to learn there was a single button that could split an image down into induvidual cyan, magenta, yellow and key layers, and that as these images were bitmap, they also didn't need to be in halftone. Only a small tinkering with contrast was required to strengthen up the colours before my design could be printed onto drafting film. (see right)When preparing my screen I was really happy with the amount of detail captured, however I was already beginning to feel my work simply wasn't big enough to stand out on a busy street to passersby. Especially when pasted to a wall, as many pieces tend to lose impact when placed against the extreme texture and pattern of an outside brick or concrete surface. However as the uni had provided the screens and high quality printing paper free for today I was still excited to try the four colour process out. Because of the high quality paper it made me thankful I had spent time practicing printing with my bee design, as I definitely felt additional confidence in my abilities when returning to the workshop this time.
Immediately upon laying down the blue layer I started to get excited. My previous designs were not so detailed, and it was only now I was begining to feel I was stretching the possibilities of what the screens were able to achieve. Also seeing an image which I was quite familiar with by now rendered only in a single colour was quite interesting. It made me consider that by witholding some of the colour layers, the entire tone of the piece could be changed. I was interested also to see how from just four layers of colour, full chromatic range could be achieved as right now it was hard to tell how each colour layer would combine and interact.
With the addition of magenta my piece started to fill out as now the top text and some purple mixtures were starting to appear as well as blue. This started to demonstrate how overlaying two colours such as red and blue could actually produce a range of tonal values, and I could now start to understand how together full colour was achieved. There was something attractive about the CM variant at this stage (right) and the pastel tone created without any dark black values. In my opinion I think this conveyed a sense of fragility, without the grounding prescence of intense shadow.
After adding the yellow layer the vibrancy in the corals was beginning to shine through. However I was disattisfied with the dirty green produced in the background section in some areas of the print. (left) I think this was due to the changes I made to the contrast when editing my colour seperations on photoshop. As there was no measurable guide when making these changes, I feel I increased the intensity of the yellow layer too much, thus lending my print an unintended green hue. I think when editing the photoshop colour seperations in future, I should make sure to increase the contrast of all the layers proportionately, thus preventing one colour becoming too saturated.
It was when the final key layer was printed that I suddenly saw the whole design draw together. This final black layer covered all of the unnattractive dirty green colour and added crisp definition, as my style often uses pronounced linework. Printing this layer also made me realise exactly how much I do use black, and defining lines to structure my work.One of the things I enjoyed most about this workshop was registering each layer of the print and ensuring they all lined up. Precision is important to my practice, and being able to meticulously ensure each stage of the print was executed as seamlessly as possible was something I found very satisfying.
I was able to create a run of 10 which were nearly perfect. (see left) Although there were small variations between each edition, they were of a suitable quality that, if I were to install this design on the street, these could be sold as artist proofs for example. Having my work on high quality paper as a full colour screen print was a very exciting experience, particularly because I had created them entirely myself, and been at every stage of development from sketch to painting then poster design and finally a fully realised print.
I did purposefully offset the colour seperations in one print, and actually really liked the effect it created. (see right) It reminded me of the blue and red 3D pictures which need corresponding blue and red glasses to see properly. There was something retro about this style too, harking back to when earlier machine printing did not always register each layer of colour perfectly on top of one another. Although I was happy with these, ultimately I wanted this design to appear on the street as an advertisement style
poster. These a4 prints were perfect for sale, however to have the maximum impact the street version would need to be bigger. So I decided in our final week of SKILLS 3 I wanted to create a new screen with A3 positives and then paste those up instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment