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Overprinted Black

Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary Saturday, 2nd August 2008

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Pure black

Pale blue

Red ink wash

Blue ink wash

I DREW the Fiffle-Triggy yesterday in order to try out a method of producing artwork for print; for instance if you were drawing a comic strip for reproduction in a newspaper. As you can see (below), I printed a pale blue version of my pen and ink drawing, then added washes of red and blue (as described on my ‘ink bottles’ page). I scanned this colour-only image then, in Photoshop, superimposed the pure black drawing on top.

As you can see from the detail (above), I didn’t get the registration spot-on. This is probably because the paper (100gsm colour copy from my laser printer) was distorted when I painted it, even though I stretched the A4 sheet by spraying it very lightly with water then stuck it with gum-strip to a drawing board.

I like the graphic effect the out of register ‘overprinting’ of the black but I need to find a way of getting it spot-on, perhaps by using registration marks in each corner and ‘re-stretching’ the colour image to fit in Photoshop.

Use an old palette when you’re working with Indian ink; it doesn’t clean up easily.

Note: I scanned the black pen drawing at 600 dpi, otherwise the lines might look jagged when printed.