Cyan. Magenta. Yellow. Black. The building blocks of commercial color printing, and the tools of my trade over the last 30 years in the graphic design business. To this day I am amazed that these four colors can combine to produce some remarkable color printing of astonishing fidelity given the limited source palette. For this drawing, as an exercise, I played with the idea of working with these limited colors and simulating what commercial printing does: produce a final that is perceived to be varied in spectrum, contrast, and intensity, despite a limited source palette. I followed my usual working method of blocking in color over a simple form sketch, with yellow for the highlights, magenta for the mid tones, and cyan for the shadows (see Step1 in photo).Similar to color printing, I used black to provide contrast and definition. In theory (here), cyan, magenta, and yellow alone should be able to produce a credible simulation of the full spectrum. However, given the limitations of printing ink, paper whiteness, and viewing light, the black is necessary to “punch it up”. And so, I did the same, adding black over the color areas (Step 2 in photo), to darken where the combination of cyan and magenta were incapable of producing the necessary contrast. I worked the cyan and magenta together, one over the other to darken each in their respective areas. Ok, with a little orange to transition between the magenta and yellow, the combination of which in pastel anyway, produces a peculiar pink unwanted here.
For the final, I wanted to thin out the highlights a bit so that the yellow was not so intense. I buffed it down and then came over with some light beige and tans, working them into the background and then re-establishing the yellow where necessary. I wanted a high contrast, but I didn’t want the shadow areas to be too “black black”, but rather, a “colored black”. I scrubbed down the black chalk and worked deep blue and purple together, plus a little green to muddy things up. Not true CMYK, but less stark. I reserved the black for the final definition of forms, where absolutely necessary. “Punching it up”, in my own way.
A couple of production notes: I worked from a black and white image. Or at least the print-out is, I may have stripped out all color from the original at an earlier stage, I can’t remember. The paper is my standard, Rives BFK, but in a hard-to-find size: 30 x 42”, which leads me to believe the sheet may have been cut from their standard 42” wide roll.
