Lithography style

[Minton]

I have 3 black and white drawings (with no tone) - each representing a colour layer in the picture. I want to create the effect of a three colour separation lithographic print (with the layers semi opaque) so that the colours overlay each other. e.g. if a blue layer overlaps a yellow layer, then green is made. 

How might I do this? Each black drawing needs to be solidly coloured, then I need to layer them over each other.

Are there mezzotint options if I wanted to change the solid areas to textures?

Is there a fill that looks like the colour is made by traditional print-making? 

(Complete beginner with Affinity Designer.)

 

[Old Bruce]

5 hours ago, Minton said:

I have 3 black and white drawings...

Are these scans? Documents you have already made? Pieces of Paper?

Easiest way to get the three colours is to import the three drawings (hopefully they are TIFF files) and then just choose the Layers and Colour them. An Image layer can be coloured. Once you are happy with the colours, this is just a tool for you to see what the finished drawing will be looking like, remove the colours and export each of the layers as a PDF. Everything should line up. 

You also want to use Mezzotint techniques on a Litho Stone... you would need to remove some of the "grease" on the "stone" after applying it, or apply the grease as tiny areas. All of this is doable with designer but you'll need to practice with the tools and shapes and Pixel layers with Brushes and ... 

[Hangman]

Hi @Minton and welcome to the forums...

You can certainly convert your 3 black and white drawings (with no tone) to RGB channels and recolour them (as @Old Bruce has mentioned above).

It would be really helpful if you could perhaps upload some screenshots of your B/W drawings so we can get a better idea of what your starting point is and we can then, hopefully, provide some workable options for you...

Knowing what you have (again as @Old Bruce asks) as a starting point would be really helpful as would understanding what your final expectations are and what you plan to do with the final image, e.g.,

• Is this purely a visual, on canvas exercise
• Do you want to print the resulting colour image in some way, shape or form

Depending on your intentions, this could be possible to achieve either via the use of blend modes or through the use of overprinting so the more info you can provide the more we will be able to advise you...

[Minton]

Hi

Thanks for your replies. I have attached my 3 drawings. They exist on paper and are scans. I would use red, yellow and blue for each drawing layer - hopefully making secondary colours where they overlap.

I've also attached 2 photos of the final effect I am interested in achieving (which shows the fill textures too).

I have used only GIMP on a very basic level before. So I would really appreciate 'tab' by 'tab' instructions on how to do it using Affinity Designer. I've never used Photoshop.

I need to print it out a4 (with a home printer) when finished. It is for my portfolio - children's book illustration.

I'm also going to make real litho plates for these 3 drawing (I have a printing press) - to compare the results and time-taken to make them.

Thanks so much for your time in helping me. 

[Hangman]

Hi @Minton,

Apologies in advance, I don't think I've done your images justice but just had a quick play with colours, I've not looked at textures...

[thomaso]

3 hours ago, Minton said:

(which shows the fill textures too).

You can use any image with the wanted texture to make it appear on your layout. You can use either one image for all 3 layers or individual images for each layer or even several textures for 1 layer by masking the unwanted parts of the texture image.

I think a stone or paper texture will be a good start, for instance https://pixabay.com/photos/plaster-texture-white-housewall-1128958/
The texture should get placed in a size where its details fit to actual the print size. If required you could place the image several times to fill the format up to the final size, and thus either merge the texture in a separate document first or merge it within the illustration layout and blur its edges slightly.

Since there is quite a range of possibilities to setup such an layout, a 'tab by tab' description can be excessive. Instead I recommend to get known with the Affinity methods of masking & clipping with any of the various available video tutorials.

Maybe @Hangman will show their Layers panel with just 1 of the shown colour versions to give hints to the way of layers, applied colours and blend modes. Note, though you can create a colour swatch as an overprinting colour it would not occur like this in the layout but in the print only. Thus another option appears more useful for your lithography simulation, using 'normal' colours + a blend mode, e.g. Multiply or Darken, even other blend modes may cause interesting results, its up you.

For the texture it would be sufficient to use its luminance only, if you are in APub and with a CMYK document you can activate the "K Only" button in the context tool bar to use a colour image as grayscale. Again, there are various possible ways to achieve such a result of a blended texture on the illustration.

[Hangman]

On 3/10/2023 at 8:04 PM, thomaso said:

Maybe @Hangman will show their Layers panel with just 1 of the shown colour versions to give hints to the way of layers, applied colours and blend modes. Note, though you can create a colour swatch as an overprinting colour it would not occur like this in the layout but in the print only. Thus another option appears more useful for your lithography simulation, using 'normal' colours + a blend mode, e.g. Multiply or Darken, even other blend modes may cause interesting results, its up you.

I don't believe the overprint method would work in this particular instance because the artwork is pixel rather than vector based and you can't apply global colours to pixel based artwork which means you wouldn't benefit from applying global colour with overprint.. Affinity software also doesn't currently have an Overprint Preview option which would make this approach less than flexible from a visual working point of view...

There are a few ways you could approach this...

Method 1 - RGB Channels

Method 2 - Blend Modes

This method gives you the most flexibility I think and allows for easier experimentation... I've added a couple of textures in this example just to give you a flavour of what you could do but again, experimenting to find out what works best for you is the best way to go...

[firstdefence]

Could try them vectored.

Snail 1.svg

Snail 2.svg

Snail 3.svg

 

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Hangman said:

I don't believe the overprint method would work in this particular instance

I think for the vector rectangle workflow it works to assign global colours and thus overprinting swatches. Nevertheless, for the mentioned simulation of a lithography print result, printed on an office ink or laser printer, the blend mode solution is more useful because of its preview within the layout.

[thomaso]

Another option is to use layers of type "Image" which allow to assign a global swatch.

[Minton]

Thanks so much for all your replies and time - wow - very nice of you to help me so much.

I'll have a go. Thanks again,

[Hangman]

Just now, Minton said:

Thanks so much for all your replies and time - wow - very nice of you to help me so much.

Let us know if you have any questions and how you get on... it would be great to see what you come up with, I'm sure it will be a lot better than anything we've created so far...