Colour or monochrome?

Well this may be a bit of surprise for those of you who know my work well. I often say that I don’t know what to do with colour, and I may be about to prove that point!

I have a few small plates which I’ve worked on in a more instinctive and experimental way, and they look good without colour, but I felt that they would cope with an extra element. I’ve mulled over creating collagraph plates to print a base colour or another etched plate, but time is against me for these techniques. I decided instead to explore monoprint which I could work with in an intuitive way while I was printing the copper plate.

'...the far end'

The choice of colour came from a base colour that was in the landscape at the time that I originally made the image. This first image is of a part of the landscape which is muddy and soggy, hence the umber, mud coloured tones.

'worn out day'

The second image is of a stretch of brook lined with tall, dead grasses which had faded to a pale ochre colour.

As you can see my use of colour is still somewhat restrained, in fact it could be still referred to as monochrome, but I think stronger colours would have distracted from the original etching.