And now for something completely different.

Having been playing with water colour effects on paper recently I considered how they could be combined with my more usual oil-based printing techniques.  My goal was to produce a printed image on paper already stained with water colours.  The dilemma was to work out when paper should be wet or dry.  After much experimentation I came up with the following.

Initial drawing

I initially drew my self portrait.  This was then dry-point etched on to acetate.

I hoped the sanding discs of my mini Ozito drill would rough up the acetate surface outside my etching to produce an interesting background surround, but I didn’t press hard enough and it came out very scribbly.

Before making a new plate I experimented with water colours.

Using damp 250gsm Hahnemuhle paper, water colour paints were mixed and applied to the surface allowing the paint to flow and merge in places.  Whilst still damp, the portrait was printed over the now randomly coloured base.

The idea was starting to come through but I needed to fix the area outside my portrait and apply more colour to the background.  Using Photoshop I simulated what I could visualize in my mind.

By using a second inked plate and a mask over the etching I hoped to reproduce this.  I anticipated that the background would never appear solid with the water colours just showing across the figure.  My reasoning was that the paper would be wetter in the water colour areas and could not be blotted the same as the non-painted areas or the paint would be removed.  Would the black oil-based ink appear more or less dense where it was applied over the paints?  How much of the dribbled colours would show through?

As can be seen on the left-hand print there was both more water colour paints and ink, so the result is quite defined.  The right-hand print had less of both and the water colours have affected the outer overlaid black quite significantly.

It’s not quite worked the way I hoped but the next step is to apply the water colour to damp paper (so it runs and merges), followed by the figure etching and then allow the paper to dry before printing the black overlay.  That way I should get a better, and more solid, coverage.