How I Choose Colours for a Reduction Linocut Print

Colour is one of the things I enjoy most about making a reduction linocut. Before I begin, I usually have a fairly clear idea of the palette I want to work with and the atmosphere I hope to create. I might even imagine how the colours will build from the first layer to the last.

But a reduction print rarely ends up exactly where I thought it would.

As the image develops, colours begin to react to one another, unexpected combinations appear and sometimes a shade I hadn't planned at all changes the direction of the whole print. So although I start with a plan, I have learnt not to hold onto it too tightly.

For me, choosing colour is a mixture of planning, instinct and responding to what is happening on the paper.

It starts with a feeling, rather than an exact colour

Most of my landscapes begin with something I have seen or experienced while walking around the Malvern Hills and the countryside near my home. I take photographs and make sketches, and naturally I notice the colours around me, but when I return to the studio I am not trying to reproduce them exactly.

What stays with me is often the feeling of the landscape: a particular light, the atmosphere of a season, the intensity of a field against the sky, or simply the mood of being there.

That is what I want the palette to carry.

A field doesn't have to become the exact green it was on the day I saw it, and a sky doesn't have to match my photograph. I am much more interested in finding a combination of colours that brings me back to something I felt in that landscape.

Before starting a larger or more complicated print, I sometimes make colour swatches so that I can see the whole palette together. With smaller prints I am much more likely to skip that stage. I usually have enough of an idea in my head to begin, knowing that the palette may change anyway once I start printing.

I almost never use a colour exactly as it comes

I have a good variety of printing inks in my studio, but there is something in me that nearly always wants to interfere with them.

I might warm a colour, cool it, soften it, add a little of something unexpected or mix several inks together until it becomes something that feels right for that particular print. I do occasionally use a colour straight from the tube, but it is rare.

There isn't one particular colour that I find especially difficult to get right. I simply keep mixing and adjusting until I am happy with what I see.

I am also hopeless at recording my mixtures. I have never been someone who writes down precise ratios of one ink to another, although that would probably be the sensible thing to do. My way of mixing colour is much more intuitive. I trust my eye, and after doing it for so long I know that I can usually find my way back to a colour when I need it.

It might not be chemically identical to the first mixture, but that doesn't matter much to me. What matters is that it belongs with the other colours in the print.

Then something unexpected happens

This is often where the process becomes most interesting.

I can be mixing the colour I think I need and suddenly arrive at a completely different shade that excites me much more. It may have nothing to do with the palette I originally planned, but once I see it, I want to use it.

And one unexpected colour can change everything.

Once it is printed, I start seeing the colours around it differently. The next layer I had planned may no longer feel right. I might need to make another colour warmer, darker or quieter, or change the balance of the palette altogether.

I love those moments because the print stops being something I am simply executing and starts becoming a conversation. I make a decision, the image changes, and then I have to respond to what it has become.

There is a fine line between having a plan and being so attached to it that you miss something better. Some of my favourite colour combinations have appeared because I allowed myself to move away from the original idea.

Of course, it doesn't always work

The difficult part is that reduction linocut is not particularly forgiving when an experiment goes wrong.

I print the entire image from a single block of lino. After each colour is printed, I carve more of the block away before printing the next one. By the end, much of the original block has disappeared.

I explain the full process in How I Make a Reduction Linocut Print.

There is no returning to an earlier version.

That makes every new colour exciting, but also slightly dangerous. I can spend weeks building an image through layer after layer and then make a colour decision that simply doesn't work.

And I have done that plenty of times.

I have ruined good prints because the colours didn't come together at the end, because a later layer behaved differently from what I imagined, or because something simply went wrong along the way.

It is painful when it happens. With painting I can often paint over something, scrape it back or change direction. With a reduction linocut, the part of the block I carved yesterday no longer exists. I have to work with what I have in front of me.

That irreversibility is frustrating, but I think it is also part of what makes the process so compelling. At some point I have to stop testing, roll the ink onto the block and commit to the colour.

Then I lift the paper and see what I have done.

The print begins to tell me what it needs

As more layers are added, I find myself thinking less about the palette I planned at the beginning and more about the image that is now sitting in front of me.

This is where colour becomes much less predictable.

A shade that seemed too dominant a few layers earlier might suddenly make perfect sense when a darker colour arrives beside it. A colour I thought would be important may end up needing very little space. Occasionally the smallest area of a new colour changes the balance of the entire composition.

That is why I find it difficult to think about colours individually. By this stage, I am looking at the whole image: where my eye travels, where it rests, which areas need more energy and which need to become quieter.

The question is no longer simply What colour should I print next?

It becomes Does this print actually need anything else?

Knowing when to stop

This can be surprisingly difficult.

There are prints I look at and immediately know they are finished. Everything feels balanced and I have no desire to touch them again.

Others sit in my studio for weeks.

Sometimes I become convinced that a print needs another layer, but every colour I try seems to make it worse. Eventually I put it aside because I can't find the answer. When I come back to it days or weeks later, I occasionally realise that there was no answer to find. The reason nothing worked was because the print didn't need another layer at all.

It was already finished. I just couldn't see it yet.

Then there are the prints that surprise me in the opposite way. I might be looking at an image thinking I still have at least three colours left to print. I mix the next one, print the layer and suddenly the whole thing falls into place.

The colour relationships settle. The composition feels complete. Something that had been slightly unresolved suddenly makes sense.

And those other three colours I thought I needed disappear from the plan.

That moment is difficult to explain, but I recognise it when it happens. There is simply nothing else I want to add.

Leaving room for the print to surprise me

I still plan my palettes. I still think carefully about colour before I begin, and I don't think I would want to approach a reduction linocut without some idea of where I am going.

But I've also learnt that the plan is only the beginning.

Colour behaves differently once it is printed. It changes according to what sits beside it and what has already been printed underneath it. An accidental mixture can become the most important colour in the image. A layer I thought was essential can turn out to be unnecessary. And occasionally a decision goes completely wrong and there is no rescuing the print.

That uncertainty is part of why I still find the process so absorbing.

When I look at a landscape, I don't want simply to record the colours that were there. I want to find a palette that holds something of the experience of seeing it: the light, the season, the atmosphere and whatever it was that made me stop and look in the first place.

I may choose the first colours, but somewhere along the way the print starts making demands of its own.

And I think some of the most interesting work happens when I am willing to listen to it.

If you'd like to see where all those colour decisions eventually lead, you can explore my original reduction linocut prints here.