COLOUR PRINTING

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Elohim Creating Adam

Ever the artist and the inventor, Blake embarked on the project in 1795 of developing a new technique and a fresh method of communicating his thoughts. In addition to creating his illuminated books which combined his engraved poetry and illuminations in book form, he worked out a method to make larger images suitable for display on walls. These would not use his small printing press to print from engraved copper plates but would make prints from paintings on mill board transferred to sheets of paper. Working quickly he could make up to three pictures from one painting on the mill board.

In his illuminated books his images were supplemented by words. In his large colour prints the image itself would convey his symbolic thought by implication. Blake chose designs with which his audience may be familiar from reading the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, or Shakespeare or Milton. The individual pictures recalled specific stories which contributed to his own concepts of the relationship of God and Man. For Blake Man was bound to God by an indelible cord, but the relationship between the two was constantly developing. The Large Colour Printed Drawings convey stages in the tense process of evolving spiritual consciousness.

Scholars have not definitively described how Blake made his Large Coloured Printed Drawings but many have attempted to understand his process which involved layering, pigments, binders and fixatives.

An early description of Blake's tempera technique by Frederick Tatham:

"Blake, when he wanted to make his prints in oil, took a common thick millboard, and drew in some strong ink or colour his design on it strong and thick. He then painted on it in such oil colours and in such a fashion that they would blur well. He painted roughly and quickly, so that no colour would have time to dry. He then took a print of that on paper, and this impression he coloured up in water-colours, repainting his outline on the millboard when he wanted to take another print...he could vary slightly each impression; and each having a sort of accidental look, he could branch out so as to make each one different."

Bruce MacEvoy on his website wrote that Blake's Large Color Printed Drawings were:

"likely made by creating a strong line drawing in ink on a large firm sheet of absorbent millboard, then roughly painting the areas within this outline with an oily paint (sometimes mixed with chalk). Sheets of paper were pressed against this plate before the paint had dried, transferring the colored image to the paper with a fresco like mottling and unevenness (visible at the top of the image). Once dried, these prints were lightly coated with a glue sizing, then further colored with watercolors, and the black outlines clarified and elaborated with pen and ink. This method of making prints was much faster and simpler than cutting a large copper plate; it also introduced random textural and color variations in each print, and allowed changes in the coloring or design as the paints on the millboard were refreshed for new prints."

Milton, Plate 29 [31], (E 128)

"The River rises above his banks to wash the Woof:                
He takes it in his arms: be passes it in strength thro his current
The veil of human miseries is woven over the Ocean
From the Atlantic to the Great South Sea, the Erythrean.

Such is the World of Los the labour of six thousand years.
Thus Nature is a Vision of the Science of the Elohim.            

                 End of the First Book." 

Jerusalem, Plate 73, (E 228) 

"Where Luvahs World of Opakeness grew to a period: It
Became a Limit, a Rocky hardness without form & void
Accumulating without end: here Los. who is of the Elohim
Opens the Furnaces of affliction in the Emanation                
Fixing The Sexual into an ever-prolific Generation
Naming the Limit of Opakeness Satan & the Limit of Contraction
Adam, who is Peleg & Joktan: & Esau & Jacob: & Saul & David

Voltaire insinuates that these Limits are the cruel work of God
Mocking the Remover of Limits & the Resurrection of the Dead     
Setting up Kings in wrath: in holiness of Natural Religion
Which Los with his mighty Hammer demolishes time on time
In miracles & wonders in the Four-fold Desart of Albion
Permanently Creating to be in Time Reveald & Demolishd"