About “Spring”

 
The Inspiration “Spring”, a picture of pink dogwood blossoms, was created as a tribute to my mother and father. My father, a role model for me in many ways, became a mosaicist in his retirement. His mosaic of flower blossoms completed sometime in the 1970s is one of my favorites and, I think, one of his best. My mother who lived with a passion for art and for nature and the outdoors was an inveterate walker who covered miles every day regardless of weather conditions. Springtime was always a time of renewal for her and a moment marking a new season. In her later years, as her primary caregiver, there was relief for me when she had made it unscathed through another winter, that is, until Spring 2013 when the dogwoods blossomed without her. The Print “Spring” is an 8 color print. A pale yellow was used as a foundation, an underlayment. Then, three colors were used for the background, a violet, a turquoise, and a yellow, the latter of which was blended with one of the first two to create two different blended backgrounds. Printing the blossoms themselves using my normal method of creating color separations proved unsuccessful. The detail and color variation of the blossoms were too subtle. I therefore resorted to printing the blossoms as a four-color CMYK process print, a process used by many commercial printers as well as for printing color pictures in newspapers. “CMYK” stands for four colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). A halftone plate is created for each process color and is printed in such a way that the four colors are juxtaposed with one another so that the eye perceives a wide range of colors. In the case of “Spring”, there are green, brown, and many shades of pink, although only the four process colors were used. Looked at from a distance, the halftone dots fade into the overall image with many color gradations. The prints were made on Arches 88 paper. Images are 12½” x 12½” on 19” x 19” sheets. Speedball Acrylic Screen Printing Inks were used. Adobe Photoshop was used for developing the screenprinting plates. Ten prints are included in the edition, five with a violet background and five with a turquoise background. The project was completed in July 2013. Progression Series The print progression showing the development of “Spring” can be seen in a series of five figures. The first two images show the blended backgrounds which were created using four colors printed in three layers. These are followed by four additional images showing the CMYK layers.
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Plates1-3 (Background)

Plates 1-4 (Cyan)

Plates 1-6 (Yellow)

Plates 1-5 (Magenta)

Plates 1-7 (Black) (Final Print)