Four + One: Different Prints (including hand colored)

This print I call 4+1 I made last year in Holme Fen. It has stuck with me as a nice image and I have included it in my Three Wood Lands photobook. The first time I printed it I took a test print and hand colored it. It looked alright but I cropped out the flaws in photoshop so it needed to be done again at some point. 

4+1 Blog Post Cover Image (Cold Tone)

I had read somewhere that for hand coloring prints it is preferable to use a warm tone image. I set about combining the need to make a better hand colored version with an experiment with sepia toning and hand coloring. I made 4 different prints. Normally I make these prints for hand coloring a half or full stop lighter so the color has a chance to shine. 

For all the images I used Ilford MG Art 300 paper as it has a cotton rag base and the texture is much like watercolor paper. This paper is my favorite for hand coloring with pencils as the rough texture takes the color easily. I developed them all with Moersch Eco 4812 which has a nice neutral to cold tone. 

Hand coloring is really very easy, almost like paint by numbers without someone to tell you which colors to choose. It doesn't take too long, these are printed on 12x 91/2 inch paper and I probably spent about an hour on each. I recommend getting a good quality pencil set. I use the Faber-Castell 60 pencil kit to get a good range of color choices. (It costs £130.00) Cheaper pencils seem to have harder leads that don't transfer color as easily. Generally you get a quite muted desaturated color palette which I really like. 

(All images use borders created in Photoshop.)

4+1 Eco 4812 Developed Cold Tone Version

I then hand colored a version of this with the cooler developer tone. 

Hand Colored Cold Tone Version

I then made two sepia toned versions. These were done using the Moersch MT4 sulphur/sepia toning kit mixed 1+100. Toned them to completion for about 10 minutes each. The first uncolored version here... 

Sepia Toned Version

Hand colored Sepia Toned Version

They both work well for me. I did not attempt to use the same colors for each one which makes direct comparisons difficult. Instead I chose the colors the second time as I saw fit. It seems I chose somewhat warmer and more subdued colors for the sepia toned print. I am not sure if I was influenced by the color of the print itself. The warmth of the sepia version seems more natural while the cool tone print seems to be more vibrant with the increased contrast. Because the shades of tone in the sepia tone are warm that warm shows through the pencil colors and influences the outcome. The neutral/cool tone print does not influence the color which may take some guess work out of color selection.