books!

Last silkscreen project! For me, this one was mostly about experimenting with new inks, flocking, and attempting to print on something other than paper. I had fun with the flocking, even though it's pretty messy and gets everywhere. Flocking is a soft velvety finish that you can put on a print. When you buy it at a craft store it's a bag of soft fluffy stuff (really fine particles). I also tried using metallic ink for the first time. It's pretty much the same as normal ink, just need more passes to get a nice solid gold color.


silkscreened books


silkscreened book with flocking


silkscreened book


silkscreened book

I also made a few prints of each of the designs, mostly as test prints to figure out what colors I would use, and placement of the different stencils. I think I like the prints better than the books.


silkscreen print


silkscreen print

....and some process pics. This first one is the jig I made out of foamcore to adjust for the height of each book (so the screen is flat and not floating in the air - floating not good). Hmm... I don't know why the photo is sideways...



Test prints for the blue-pink gradient before actually printing on the book. I wanted to make sure I got a nice blend of colors on the book.

A couple sketches from the last Ill'n life drawing. There was a toga theme, so lots of bedsheets and imaginary dismembered heads.


pencil


pencil

I think these were both about 10 minute poses. I can almost get the whole figure roughed out in 10-15 minutes now, so definitely improving. :)

DesignSponge Portfolio

These are all school assignments completed in 2010. The majority of them are from the current semester (September to December).

Illustration for a magazine article about Facebook and the jealousy it can cause in romantic relationships.

silkscreen

Portrait of the band Weezer.

mixed media (acrylics, oils, pencil crayon, collage)

Custom book cover design for a collection of Edgar Allan Poe stories.

silkscreen

Custom book cover for a dictionary.

silkscreen

Illustration for a war poster recruiting orcs (from the Lord of the Rings).

silkscreen

Silkscreen project. Assignment was to re-interpret a cliche phrase.

silkscreen

Silkscreen project. Artist trading cards. This piece was in a recent exhibit titled "In Print" in the Concourse Gallery at Emily Carr.

silkscreen

Silkscreen poster assignment.

silkscreen

Print project from Intro to Print Media class.

intaglio print

the insanity is over... temporarily....

This past week was a crazy blur, I had a paper and two projects due, and crazily did silkscreen for both projects. How to Stress Oneself Out: 101. BUT - both my projects turned out pretty well. I'm really really happy with my illustration. I'm seriously thinking about working silkscreen into my illustration career when it comes to that time.

Our illustration project was to illustrate a magazine article or story that we had written. I don't consider myself a writer, so I picked an article from "Elle" magazine. The article was about Facebook and how it creates more jealously within romantic relationships, because you can snoop your significant other's facebook page and easily blow things out of proportion.


silkscreen print on stonehenge paper

I was also playing with different colors of paper. I would like to try printing on other surfaces too, like old books, or other printed material. Menus? Signs? The possibilities are endless. Gary Taxali is an illustrator that my illustration teacher pointed out to me, and he works with a silkscreen method in his work. He prints on old books, and other stuff in his illustrations. Very cool!


silkscreen print on stonehenge paper

oh, if anyone is curious, this is a 3 layer print. Light blue, a peach-ish color, and cyan.

Hummers

Latest silkscreen project. We were to design a poster that "said something"; topic was our choice. My poster was "anti-hummer"; I tried to approach it from an environmental point of view, however during crit someone mentioned that a lot of older cars on the road probably do more damage than a Hummer. Which was a good point. I guess this poster was more of an emotional response to seeing a Hummer drive by one morning when I was walking to school. And I tried some new things, like an ink splatter stencil, which I was very happy with how it printed. I also cut out the text by hand from rubylith, and am happy with how that turned out too.

I took some process pics again. This first one is with Yellow, Magenta and Cyan printed. Part of this project was to print a CMYK photo. CMYK is printer-speak for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black. I found this project interesting because I've been exposed to CMYK process in the digital world of pre-press from my previous work experience, but this time I was doing it all manually, so that was kinda neat.


silkscreen

Y, M, C and two spot colors. "Spot" colors are solid pre-mixed colors (not colors made by the overlapping of CMYK). I don't know if that made sense?


silkscreen

Black layer added! This layer was scary and exciting to print.


silkscreen

Finished print (well, except for trimming off the edges). All those X's you see around the image are registration marks. They help to line up the layers properly during printing.


silkscreen print on stonehenge paper

This was a 7 layer print, most layers we have done so far.

indiana jones

watercolor and acrylic on illustration board

This is the latest method we learned in illustration class. Start off by creating a drippy texture in the background with watercolors, then paint your illustration overtop with acrylics. Very cool technique, I will definitely be playing with this one when I have more free time. Ah, free time, how I miss you.

dr. sketchy sketches

a few sketches from Dr. Sketchy on sunday night. Breaking in a new (and larger!) sketchbook, woot!


pencil
5 minute pose.


pencil
10 mins.


charcoal pencil
10 minute pose.



charcoal pencil
10 mins? I don't remember.

coming soon to a mailbox near you

hello! I finally feel slightly relaxed, I'm getting a bit of a breather this week from the slog of homework. whew! Relishing the slow pace and gearing up for the next flurry of projects in a couple weeks. What a life... at least it's fun stress.

These are trading cards that I made for silkscreen class. The subject matter was wide open so we could do whatever we wanted, which was nice. We got to trade cards with everyone in class, so I now have a handful of mini original prints! so exciting! I printed a whole whack of mine, and plan to send them out to family and a few friends, so you may be getting a set in the mail, whether you want one or not. haha. And providing I have your correct address....


silkscreen


silkscreen

Oh, and our class's trading cards are being submitted to the Richmond Art Gallery for an upcoming exhibit, so if you are in the Richmond or Vancouver area anytime soon, check it out! The exhibit opens at the end of November, and runs till January. Check the link for exact dates.

orc prints!

silkscreen

These prints were for an illustration project. The assignment was to do a war poster, so I chose to do a recruitment poster for the Uruk-hai army from LOTR. Fun! I'm really happy with how they turned out. When I was printing them I had fun trying out a few different colors for the orc, and also different paper colors. It was interesting with different shades of gray paper because the same blue ink would look completely different depending what color of paper it was printed on. Also, my poor job of washing out the ink from my screen resulted in a happy accident (more rough texture in the solid color areas). (if you don't wash the ink out well enough from your screen, it blocks the screen and ink won't pass through those areas) Good thing I chose Orcs as my image and not Elves or something.



silkscreen



silkscreen

Here are some process pics for people not familiar with silkscreen printing. First, you make stencils. These can be drawn, photocopied, printed on transparency, cut out from paper, they can also be made digitally (like a halftone photo). The orc stencils are cut out from rubylith (one of my fav stencils so far, you get really clean lines and shapes when printing). The hand is a laser print-out. This is one of the reasons I am enjoying silkscreen so far (for the most part anyways) it is very versatile what you can do with it.



Then you put the stencils on your screen (which at this point is coated with emulsion) and expose it to UV light. The areas that are blocked by the stencil - the emulsion will wash out (and ink will be able to pass through). The emulsion that is hit with UV light will harden and block the tiny little holes in the screen. The emulsion is the green stuff on the screen. The yellow part is what the screen looks like normally with no emulsion on it. In this pic, the screen is set up and inked and ready to go.



This is the first layer. In printing you have to separate your image into layers beforehand, and figure out how you will print it. The planning part is HUGE, which I am slowly learning. I've been figuring out my layers in photoshop and planning them out there first, so I can see visually how it will work. I think it's kinda funny using a digital tool to help me print something by hand, but whatever, it works for me.



Second layer. This layer was exciting to print cuz the orc suddenly materialized.



Ready to print by pulling the ink across the screen with the squeegee. Pressure is a tricky thing to master.



The drying racks.

the bee's knees

First official silkscreen project. I think it turned out alright. I got a little frustrated during the process, I had to expose my screen more times than I intended, the emulsion peeled off one time, I messed up the registration... had lots of hiccups along the way. But I learned some things not to do next time.

I have quite a few of these prints, so if anyone wants one, let me know. As long as you don't mind it being a little mis-registered.


screen print



screen print

Sketch from this month's Dr. Sketchy, which had a halloween theme. Can't really tell from this sketch, but there was fake blood and stuff. This was about the only decent sketch I got out that night, took me the whole three hours to loosen up. Arg. But I like how this drawing turned out. And the model had pretty awesome punk-style hair (which she had hidden under a wig during the first half of the session).


brush marker and water


This drawing is from last week's illustration class. We had an inking demo using vellum paper. Re-discovered the joy of inking and the lovely scratch-scratch of the nib on the paper. Some drawing tools have a nice "feel" when you use them.


ink

In other news, Allison discovered a HUGE spiderweb on our balcony today. This little bugger has been busy.

sketches

a few sketches from life drawing sessions on friday. The first two are from a nude session, the last one is from the costumed session (pirates!). Illustration Club at school is having costumed life drawing sessions. Sweet!


pencil


pencil

land ho!

brush pen and water

silkscreen experiments

A few prints from my first silkscreen project, which was really fun cuz it was all experimental. We didn't have to worry about being neat or producing clean prints, which was nice.

Part of the assignment was to try different kinds of stencils. I think I like rubylith the best so far. It prints the cleanest lines. The photocopies worked OK, but I learned they have to be pretty black and white to work well (greyscale doesn't really screen print).


screen print on paper
photocopy stencil.


screen print on paper
rubylith stencil (microphone) and litho crayon stencil (bla bla bla part)



screen print on paper


screen print on paper bag
photocopy stencil.


screen print on paper


screen print on paper bag
rubylith (bla bla) and sharpie pen (speech bubble) stencils.


screen print on paper