Animal Spirits part 4

I stopped by the Studio this past Saturday, just to pick up a few things.  Molly was in working on a few projects.  She had seen me inking the new block the day before, but on Saturday she saw the print for the first time.  She still liked it, but brought up one possible small issue.  She was able to understand the relationship of the bottles to each other, but thought the large black bottle on the left blended in too much with the black frame adjacent to it.  As a result, it could confuse the space a little.  I saw her point.  The frame at the bottom of the image (see above) is clearly in front of the reclining tequila bottle, which  is clearly in front of the rum ("osling's") bottle, but the mass of black on the latter joins it to the same frame, pulling it forward.  I'm pretty sure that most viewers would still understand the relative spacing of the bottles, but I'd rather the frame not be something to forces itself to be part of the still life.  

I brought a proof home to look at and considered a few possible fixes.  I could have cut out all above the lettering, and colored it to look like very dark rum, but I thought that would make the composition  too symmetrical.  I looked at online photo references of the particular bottle and found many had reflection patterns curving down one or two sides.  I cut out a piece of white paper in the shape of the reflection on the side and placed it along the edge of the frame.  It certainly stood out more, and I didn't think that it hurt the image.  I also spent time over the weekend looking at my source photos again and noting all the specific colors, and which paints that I had would best duplicate them.

Today I got to the Studio in the late morning, and again Molly was there, working on a t-shirt order.  My first task was to prepare pieces of three different kinds of paper, for the proofs I was planning to pull today.  (best to tear down paper while hands are still clean)  First thing I did was pull a new copy of the St Genevieve print, which I will eventually color and give to her parents.  Used the same Rives Lightweight that all saints are on.  Then I took out the current block and made some changes.  I cut out the reflection shape, and a piece at the top of the center bottle, which my color studies made me realize needed to go.  I also used the opportunity (my hands were already pretty inky at this point) to clear out a lot of places that took unintended ink the previous time.  I pulled two proofs, one on Rives Heavyweight, one on Okawara (the image above).  I like the new version.  I think that taking out those two pieces of black improves the balance, and the bottle on the left definitely pulls away from the frame.  Molly gave her approval as well.

After I cleaned up everything inky (palette, tools, hands) and took a brief lunch break, I decided to start color experiments on one of last week's proofs.  (it lacks the changes made today, but this was just to play with colors)  Working from my notes, I did what's seen above.  Eventually I took it home to compare to my original sources.  A lot of it is pretty accurate.  The neck of the bottle on the left is fine in the lower part (dark rum), but the top above will need to be more pink.  The label on the middle bottle stands out for being so stark white- I may darken it a little in the final version, though today's proofs are both on warmer colored papers so it may not be an issue.  The Wild Turkey bottle is fairly accurate, but I didn't need to take it home to realize that the whiskey color is way too bright and bold.  It matches the color seen in many of the online photos, but I'm guessing those colors are the results of artificial lighting or some computer trickery.  I compared it to actual whiskey I had around the house and I can definitely tone it down considerably.  The tequila bottle matches my photo pretty well (came from an actual bottle I had and photographed), but I'll see how it balances after I make the other changes.  It's pretty much an all warm palette, reminding me of the early color stage of many of my recent bigger prints (all yellows, reds, and browns), so that may inform my choices for the background colors.  I'll try some new things tomorrow, and if they work, I'll try them on the new proofs later in the week.