Adding A Splash of Colour to My Prints

After the print-making workshop at CSM, in which I made six prints of an architectural tower in Lisbon – I decided to paint over some of the designs, with which I was less satisfied. Daniel had claimed one of the prints for his “collection”, so I had five remaining – I decided to leave the best one as it was and only painted over the other four.

I decided on a moody colour palette of; dark blue, purple, yellow and grey, but wanted to try a mixture of styles with the brushwork. The first one, I decided to keep very minimal, only adding a light wash of colour – so I chose one of the prints which had strong line work. I wanted this painting to enhance the linework and not distract from it. When I showed them to my Dad, this was his favourite.

The next one, I tried making the washes much darker and adding squiggly brush strokes which imitated some of the line work in the print. I also decided to take the paint “out of frame” and onto the border surrounding the print. I used navy blue for the sky, the tower illuminated in yellow and the background buildings in purple. In hindsight, I think the adjacent blue and purple were too similar and this distracted from the contrast in the image, making it difficult to know where to focus the eye. Because I had used a print with quite faint linework, I added some extra linework with a fine paintbrush to the tower. I also added some paint splashes for good measure and added texture. Although I have many criticisms of this painting, it is very dynamic.

Then next two I decided to try making the sky purple, as with the original sketch I was working from. The sketch had been made at sunset, and the tower was illuminated by yellow lights – hence the colours. The background buildings I kept in grey. I made the colouration quite intense and varied the two paintings by adding splatters to one and brush strokes to the other – both going onto the surrounding frame. I also added extra linework with a fine paintbrush in black, as the original prints had been quite faint.

I think of all the resulting paintings, the one with the purple sky and gestural brush strokes is my favourite. I was really pleased with how the marks came out on the page – adding energy and mystery to the resulting artwork.