Spot Color

When doing a reduction print, there's usually a few head scratching moments. Today was one of those days. I spent the morning cutting away yesterday's color and then couldn't figure out the next logical move.

There's some really bright colors on the fish along with subtle shades. I wanted to focus on the fish before I started on the background and decided that since there wasn't any bright yellows and oranges in the water, maybe I could ink just the fish.

I finally decided to cut out a stencil from a sheet of Mylar and block out everything but the fish.

I set up a jig on my work surface taping a right angled piece of matte board to the counter so that the plate would be positioned in exactly same place each time I moved it from the press for re-inking.

I laid the Mylar stencil in place and taped the top edge of that to the counter as well.















After inking the fish, I just lifted the stencil and taped it to the window. This seemed to give me fairly accurate registration but we'll see as the image progresses.

 

Here's the result of today's efforts. I'm not crazy about the results because of the slightly fuzzy edges due to the thickness of the Mylar. I think I'll be alright though because there will be just small portions of these subtle colors here and there and the majority will be over-printed by the brighter oranges and yellows.

I'll begin cutting away these accents and then figure out where to go from here.