Time for the third and final colour – a semi-transparent Prussian Blue. First, I tried an experimental print or two allowing the sky to print as blue instead of orange. To achieve this, I had a couple of stage two prints where I had kept the orange ink off the sky area. This allowed the blue ink to overlay the orange on the building to appear as a dark brown-blue, but remain simply blue over the sky. Hmmm . . . quite like this . . . striking.
But – back to the original plan – an orange sky. Here is the lino block by this late stage.
And here is the print with this final colour.
This semi-transparent blue ink overlays the orange to create an inky brown blue. For these prints I use oil-based Caligo Relief printing inks. So far, I’ve not been very impressed with water-based inks. Oil-based inks take forever to dry, but have beautifully rich colours. Caligo inks can be cleaned from equipment with water – so you get the best of both worlds! This edition is printed on acid-free cartridge paper. I don’t currently have access to a press, and print these images by rubbing the back of the paper with a Japanese baren and a spoon. I find that this smooth, medium weight paper works best for my way of working.
So, in this case, I have only used three colours (excluding the white of the paper). I have occasionally used many more – but less does seem to be more when it comes to linocut colour schemes.