CMYK (ish) painting attempt #2
I'm convinced there's something in this.
Last year, in January 2023 I attempted a watercolour self portrait using just Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black paints, in an attempt to mimic the CMYK printing process by painting one colour at a time, layering each one on top of one another to build up an image that was fairly close to the image reference.
The result wasn’t awful… it wasn’t amazing either, and probably fell short due to my lack of skills as a painter more than anything else… the technique I’m sure could have been explored further, but as ever, life got in the way and I lost momentum.
A couple of weeks back, I decided to give it another go. I’d bought some better paints and brushes (so I can’t use those as an excuse), and set about looking for a nice image to work from. I didn’t want to do a self portrait… so I headed over to Pinterest and found a photo of composer Jon Clark, taken by Sebastian Nevols.
My process is pretty straightforward. I do a basic sketch, laying down the core form, then paint each colour starting with Yellow, followed by Magenta, Cyan and then instead of Black I was using Indigo.
To get a better idea how to lay these colours down, I open the image reference in Photoshop, convert it to CMYK and look at each individual channel as a reference.
Overall, I’m quite pleased… and for someone with limited painting skills and having only attempted this technique twice I’m quite excited to explore further. My plan is to get braver with laying down the paint… and try to use minimal strokes and plenty of water so it looks less laboured over.
I also need to get better at taking photos of my work. I’ve got an iPhone S and no lighting setup… at least for now I can use that as an excuse haha.