Here are some of the stages my print has gone through...
Printed red, which immediately added drama to the composition. I want there to be a feeling of blood in the dark earth, blood of the earth and of the life within it.
The life force within the earth and the lives of those who go down inside it to mine what what has died and become precious within it, be that 'black diamond' or other substances mankind mines for profit.
To lighten the butterfly (I've modelled it very loosely on a Red Admiral, because I've been visited by a particularly frenetic one in my back garden these past 2 weeks) and to put a little more vibrant sunshine into the meadow, I printed an opaque yellow in areas of the top half of the print - I applied the ink to the plate using a brush because a roller would not give me the definition I required.
A more dramatic addition is the green I added both in the grasses above and down into the subterranean darkness where plant roots reach for nutrition and where the miner toils at his work.
Finally for today I have added a second darker red in the lower areas of the print, this gives more definition to the miner's features, also I have overprinted the lower green areas to darken the green/soil areas and to start pushing back a background area around the miner's face.
That's probably going to be it for today. Partly because the paper is saturated with ink - although the ink that I use is fast drying, it is still sticky with the layers I've printed today. I'm also tired. To be honest, cutting and printing repeatedly takes its toll on me, both physically and mentally. I know that sounds wimpy, but at this moment, although I really want to carry on with this print, in my head I've had enough of it!!!
Hopefully I'll be fresher in my head when the ink has dried on the paper.
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