Animal Spirits part 5

With my Studio a construction zone this morning (power tools, dust, hot air from outside) I decided to bring a bunch of stuff down the hall to the generally vacant cafeteria and do some coloring on location.  (last time I worked on art here was when I started my smoking figure a couple of years ago)  I had made notes at home last night, comparing the first colored proof to my source photos, and used those notes today.  Results are below.

Once again this is one the first state proofs, so lacking the block changes from yesterday, but those will have minor effects on the color.  One obvious difference is that this time I put in a background color, a wash of deep red.  The bottle on the left is pretty much the same, just a different form of red on the very top.  That may change again before the final version.  The middle bottle has a darker gray in the shadow areas, but is otherwise about the same.  For the whiskey bottle I made some slight changes to the turkey colors, just different shades of those I used before.  The whiskey itself was changed from a deep yellow to an orange-brown.  Much better than yesterday, though I think it could get darker still.  The label on the tequila bottle is pretty much the same, but I changed the top to a lighter color, and gave the glass area a cooler tone (as if clear liquid or empty glass) which makes more sense and broke up a big mass of light warm tones in that area.  I don't think I'm quite there yet, but I'm close.  I took it home to consider for the next few days.  The remaining proofs are on different papers, both warmer and more absorbent, which will also have an effect on every color, perhaps unify them a bit.

Whatever happens with the bottles, I still have another animals spirit print option- the cats.  The original print (the collaborative postcard) had the cats surrounding the tea bags provided by the other artist, but that's not part of this.  Both cats will play with toys from time to time, and the simplest of those to make is a ball.  Because of the impending deadline, I added a little drier to the ink I used in yesterday's prints. I don't like to mix altered ink back into the can, so I saved it in a wax paper packet, which will work for a few days at least.  When the window installer was on lunch, I quickly went back to the Studio to do some printing.  I took out the two proofs, opened my packet of ink, and carefully dipped the open end of a plastic cup (leftover from my students' ink wash drawings) into the ink, then pressed it in place between the cats, as seen above.  The ink should be dry by Thursday, at which time I can color these proofs as a possible submission to the show on the weekend.