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

pirate illustration

Sort-of finished pirate illustration that I was working on for class. I think it needs a few more hour's work tho. Not happy with the background yet but that can probably be fixed.


watercolor & charcoal

here are some process pics:


watercolor


watercolor & charcoal


watercolor & charcoal


watercolor & charcoal