There are many ways to make a single print colourful. One of the simplest is relief inking – a process which introduces a second colour by rolling a colour over the entire surface after inking the plate in the original colour. So, instead of having a black image on white paper, the result of a relief rolled print could be a black image with a blue background.

Local colour can also be applied to the plate when inking. If a small sections requires a dash of colour, it can be inked separately to the rest of the plate. When printed, most of the image will be the original colour except for the section that was inked in a different colour.

A much more complex process to gain colour in a print is using multiple plates. Separate plates are used for different sections of the image. This process is complicated because the plates need to line up – exactly! Often tracing paper is used in order to line up the images, and a registration is used to ensure the plate and the paper are in exactly the same place on the press every time.

Multi plate etchings are a great way to introduce colour, and blends of colour into a print, but is an exact process during which much patience is required.