Kallitype Update: Layering on Color

Hafa Adai! Jen Perena here, fresh off the plane from Guam….well, actually I have been back in Rochester now for a few days, but with the jet lag (Guam is a 15-hr time difference), I am all kinds of messed up time wise, and I have been mostly sleeping since arriving home, so it seems like only yesterday I was on the beach….

My two weeks in Guam went very fast; there were ups and downs: we were lucky with awesome weather and lots of sunshine (only sprinkled on us once); but my back went out on day 3 of the training workshop I was delivering and I had to be hospitalized (briefly – I was released 6 hrs later….); my husband was able to fly over from the Philippines to celebrate our 24th anniversary with me and we had a great day touring the island followed by a very nice dinner; but I gained too many pounds to count stuffing myself like a pig from the decadent and delicious island food; my training workshop was a great success thanks to the hard work and dedication of my students; and then I arrived home to roughly a foot of snow, 38 degrees, drizzle and gray skies. Hafa Adai! (Which means hello and welcome in the local Guamanian Chamorro language).

Anyway, I have been using the time I have been unable to sleep productively! Finally I made some progress watercoloring the ‘vegetation’ set of kallitypes I made in between Italy and Guam.

Me, bundled up because I don’t want to put on the heat yet, watercoloring one of my kallitypes

Getting back into it reminded me of the challenges I faced the last time I hand colored some of my kallitypes a few years back: when to stop and leave it alone! And, surprisingly, I used some of the darker images as practice, and I kind of like them better than the lighter, more underexposed ones, which I thought would work better. But you be the judge. Here are a couple samples:

This is the print that I deemed overexposed – but the color against it looks really nice
This is the slightly underexposed print and I don’t like it as much. What do you think?

Check out my  #kallitypegirl Instagram page for a few more examples of recent hand-colored kallitypes and let me know what you think! I’ll leave you with one photo from Guam to get you through what looks to be a cold and dreary week:

View of Ypao Beach on Tumon Bay, northern Guam (also the view from my hotel room….)

Adios! (Guam was colonized by Spain in the 1600’s and a lot of the Spanish language lives on in their day to day speech!)  And Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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