RHP: Colour Experiments 02

After the first round of The Running Horses (RHP) colour experiments, I had decided to concentrate on altering the negative space of the illustrations to make them more appealing to a conservative audience. Using purple, I began experimenting with how I could manipulate my drawings without distracting from their original aesthetic too much using inversions and more colour overlays. 

Above is the original drawn monoprint, pulled by hand on A2 Canson paper. This seemed to be a suitable test subject, since the picture discusses distance and depth.

To trial one extreme, I inverted the positive and negative space in my drawing. It was an interesting effect, especially when little splashes of orange were added.  I personally despise this version, though. The aesthetic of the white and dark purple hurts my eyes due to my heightened light sensitivity and the orange patch appears too much like one of my distasteful aura headaches. I see enough chronic, random patches of colour in my vision daily without having to stare at it through an entire book. 

It is safe to say that this idea was scrapped very quickly. 

I coloured the background and far horse purple but retained the white. The picture was still flat, like the original, so I tried adding yellow to the positive space but it hurt my eyes. This idea was swiftly scrapped too.

With the help of some advisors, I decided to change the background colour to purple but kept some black in the details of my drawings. If I wanted to bring attention to a particular area, it remained black. If I wanted an area to meld into the background, it was changed to purple. 

The first round of The Running Horses colour experiments can be found here: