Blue + Yellow = Blue! Hooray!

A nervous moment this morning when I lifted the corner of the first blue-over-yellows attempt...

Who says you can't print blue over yellow? Click to embiggen.

Yup. That'll do. Actually, I might make another blue pass tomorrow... the value seems a skosh darker than what I want, but I need to wait until it dries more before I decide. Sherrie-the-Impatient's need to get this blue down this morning when yesterday's yellow was still tacky made for a little more color lifting than was... erm... entirely necessary.

I was so nervous about this step that my original design called for a lot of this blue to get covered up in subsequent passes. Now I think I might fudge the design and try to hold a little more blue, just because I like it so much.

So... for those of you wondering if I sold my soul or something to get this to work... the short answer is no! I'm working with oil-based inks, and the addition of copious amounts of titanium white to ultramarine blue made it opaque enough cover the yellows. I used no transparent base at all.

I would have liked to have the blue transparent... I love the luminosity of transparent inks over the bright white Hosho paper... but this is not an image for which I wanted to carve multiple blocks. I lose interest if things get too complicated and if I can't do a certain amount of "impulse carving" along the way. Now that I know this works, though... I'm already thinking about other images.