Printing Wee Bird after minor comestic sugery (photoshop) to franken foot.

Stayed late in the studio on Thursday for first time to get all 4 layers of Wee Bird printed. So focused on not missing the last train home and making sure everything was switched off and locked up I went and left my screens out in the middle of the dark room.

Was tempted to try printing two colourways at once but decided to focus on finishing all the blue ones so I could take a wee bird down to Rye the next day as a bonus birthday present for my mum. I did get a little concerned while cutting down my off cuts strips into perfect squares that my squares might not constitute as perfect enough for good registration. No problems though, my ruler skills can't be too rusty..

Colour mixing. Nothing better than a bit of finger painting!

 First layer down - pretty happy with the sage grey colour I mixed for the background. Added some moss green and grey to my left over Walrus beige.

 Bird on flowery scrap.

 Layer two - beak and feet - parrot tangerine.

 Layer three blue down.

Final print - top layer black - ready to photograph.

 Close up - background looks mushroom here - more green in real life.

Riding thursday night tube home with my bag of paint and big black bag next to the girls in heels and sparkly things - Getting used to finding surprise grub on my person.

A little bit of parrot magic.

Going a lot better this week after the Pigeon crash and burn. Still sleepy but feeling less mental. Decided to go back to a parrot illustration of mine that I'd printed as an etching a year ago. I like the drawing and being newish to etching I couldn't manipulate the colours the way I wanted to.

I took the discarded mini ink blob pattern from the magic cow and layered it up on an enlarged ink brush stroke. With the black feathers overlayed it created a nice effect. Also using acetate registration tabs instead of paper for first time this week, huge difference in lining up the different layers -  that's another technique for keeps.

  Computer print out for printing reference - stop me from exposing images backwards again....

 Colour mixing - do like a bit of tangerine!

 First layer down, smooth sailing. Although 10 min before this I did mess up my black layers exposure. I left screen in the exposure bed while it was warming up and it managed to expose every miniscule scatch on the glass surface onto my screen. End result bit like a very detailed road map with a surprised parrot in the middle of it... Had to wash that one out...

 Tangerine layer 2 on screen.

 Didn't even notice the edge had mis printed on the top print until I looked at this photograph.. oops.

Final black layer down - Final colour print! Woop! Without any mini crisis! 

 Close up - paper is not yellow - just funny studio lighting.

Decided to do some all black one colour prints too. Very different look for the same image.