Print processes Conclusion

Throughout this project i have learnt a bunch of new techniques and processes which have really made me change the way i make my images. For me this project has been about mark making and how we can convert our images to compliment various styles of printing. When i first thought about the concept of printing my work it sounded really boring at straight forward, after completing this unit i can definitely confirm that this is not true. Each process that i learnt was different in terms of what medium was used and what mark was being made. Lino taught me about simple shape making and how to communicate ideas and meaning through block shapes. Dry point etching on the other hand taught me how to use smaller thinner lines to create a scratched look thus giving my images more shape and form. Screen printing taught me how to produce one singular print all in one go which is rich in colour and can be printed onto almost anything!
Sublimation printing was my friend during this unit as i did not really like how the other processes made my work look rough and untidy. Sublimation allowed me to work digitally and print out my ideas onto some special card which when heated can print onto almost any synthetic material!
Foil screen printing was also a brilliant process to learn because it really neatened up some of my rough screen prints.

Screen printing was by far the biggest part of this unit and by time i had enough prints to write about i simply had enough of it. Throughout this project i have been pushed away from my normal way of image making and forced to work in a new way, having to adapt my style so it fits into each of the processes. It was fun to strip my images down to the linework to see what new images i could create and i am really happy with all of my adaptations. This unit showed me that it is not always so simple to make an image and sometimes it is the simpler design which takes longer to perfect and is sometimes the more effective method. My final screen prints for the second stage were so fiddly and it was nearly impossible to line them up, manually trying to line each print up slowed down my process and it was really annoying when they didn't come out right!

I thought that my prints from the first stage were too simple and i thought i would up my game in the second stage with a challenge, it was good to challenge myself with such a complex print and it was rewarding when they came out right. If i were to repeat this process i would probably increase the size of my characters so it would be easier for me to overlay the detail because my prints contained 40 characters per page which was really hard to line up.
I would like to have tried to overlap my characters so that they interacted with each other which would have looked pretty cool but i feared losing my image within itself if it wasn't done correctly. A lot more background colours could have been used during my experimentation stage, i manged to use a few different background colours; but i got so carried away with getting the characters perfect that i did not even notice that i was printing over and over again on the same colour background. It would have also been good if i experimented more with some large lino stamps because once that part of the unit ended i pretty much left it behind. Flock could have also been quite interesting because of the textures that could have been given to my images, moss, grass or even cloud like textures could have been created which would have fitted well into the theme.

The theme throughout this project was nature vs man made, when i first read it i thought it would be really boring but now the project has come to an end and i have seen the project through, i actually quite enjoyed working on this unit. It was fun to see how everyone responded to the theme during our collaboration section of the unit where we all got to print on top of each others work!
this unit has changed how i make marks, it has changed how i look at images and most importantly it has taught me that patience is a virtue.    

Print Processes - stage 2 - Plans for Sublimation

 I have decided that i want to do a sublimation print for one of my final ideas. I thought that i would experiment further with robots because i have used them in my work ever since the start of this project. Sublimation printing gives me a lot more freedom when it comes to my image making and style of working. I can work using any medium i want and then scan it in and print the image as it is. I thought i would use this print technique to my advantage and work using some of my preferred techniques. I planed to design four different robot like characters which would all feature man made or nature like characteristics. This first robot is an underwater bot and has living coral and shells on his arm, i coloured this one using watercolours and picked out the detail with a fine liner.
I love working with water colours simply for the reason that i have never been much of a painter due to the wild tendencies of paint. I find that watercolours allow me to control where the darker tones go and they also blend really well.

This one was designed using only a fine liner which allowed me to get some really nice shaded lines thus giving my character some depth, this robot was meant to look like he is made from pipes and exhausts.
I thought that the line work would really test this print process to it's limit, i really wanted to see how much detail i could get away with before it became a mess. I also think that putting this robot next to one of the colourful ones would really make both of the character s pop off of the page. 

This is my wooden robot inspired by the wooden version of Bender from Futurama. I had the opportunity of meeting the famous Brian Froud the other day and seeing how he works really inspired me to draw one this way. His sketch books were full of beautiful pencil drawings and some were coloured in which completed the books beauty, the contrast between the colour and the black and white really looked good. So later that afternoon i started my plans for this guy!
The rough paper that he was drawn on works well for this image because of the bumpy textures that i got when i coloured him with graphite. He then has a light layer of colouring pencils layered over the pencil to give some really earthy tones. The little vines are drawn with a fine tip pro marker and his details are etched in with a dip pen and ink!
really like how this one turned out and really fits in with the nature theme. his eyes could have done with being a bit brighter but i chose to ignore it to make him look more natural as if his face is the tree.


















This is my final design for the robot pattern, and he is the jumping ocular hydraulic nomad, or J.O.H.N for short.
When i drew out some character ideas for the summer show poster i ended up drawing an elf like character, i wanted to develop him for my own personal work so i drew him out a robot friend, and this is him.
he is drawn and coloured using photoshop, he sort of fits into the steam punk theme therefore making him industrial. I really like the detail on his arm and it was really fun to draw out. I like his rustic colour palette and the patches give him a real worm look. the use of steam confirms that he is a machine though he does have water in his wrist tank. He also comes with a compass on his chest which is a man made item that works on the magnetic energy of the earth allowing him to fit into nature and man made themes.   

This is my final design for the sublimation print, i staggered them all in photoshop and made sure my sample measured up before using that image to then repeat my chosen pattern. it turned out pretty good though it was hard to get them to perfectly fit on the page without cutting off parts of the characters. When i drew these guys out i roughly made them all the same size so the scale wasn't much of an issue, i guess due to their shape they must not fit perfectly onto A3 paper.
Overall i am really happy with how this turned out and the actual print turned out even better! though because of all the colour i was only able to get one print before it started fading.  

Print Processes - stage two - final images

Using Newman as my inspiration i created these little characters, they are no where near as complex as Newman's characters but the way that they have been placed on the page was influenced by Newman's superhero piece. I chose for my characters to not overlap because i wanted to keep it simple, sorta!
I tried to give every character at least one detailed element so that i could eventually separate the image into two images so that i could print the different sections using different colours. i tried to balance out the characters between nature and man made and order them so they would blend well as an image. Once figuring out my pattern i made a new document in photoshop and made it repeat 4 times within an A3 document. I then cut out various characters and moved  them around so that it was not soo clear where the image repeats. 

This is the final design, i removed the detail from the images and separated them onto a different document, i tried mixing them up as much as i could and i really like the chaos of the image. when i print this image i thought about what colours i could create if the two designs overlapped. i deliberately kept some of the detail on the first image because then when i print the detailed side on top; the ink should overlap and give me a third colour. i imagine lining this image up is going to be a pain 

This is the detail part of the image, picking out the detail was a good idea because now i can really highlight the characters and it will help to bring them off of the page. When Newman printed those faces i noticed that he used a bronze like colour, when we were briefed on the second stage we got an introduction to flock and foil which i think i could use to help me get some really nice textures on my final print. Using foil on the detailed print i can really highlight my characters, flock would be interesting but i don't think i would like my robots to be furry.....
I think before i buy any foil i need to print this image in ink so that i can see how easy it is to line up.




These are some of the digital plan i had for my prints. I used one of Newman's characters (featured in the post before this one) for my colour palette, i love the contrast in colours and it works really well.





I used the colour palette from Newman's planet of the apes poster design for this one. don't really think it works for this image as i seem to loose some of the detail on the more intricate parts.



This one was just me messing around with my colour layers, using different shades of the same colour seems to work quite well with this image as it gives the characters depth.





Another mess around with colours, i think the bright background works well because the accidental space that was created when i made this image is now coloured in which i think helps to complete the characters and the image as a whole.

Print processes, stage two - artist research

Ben Aslett was one of the artists featured in the powerpoint presentation that we were shown at the start of stage two. At first i didn't really like his style because of it's simplicity, but now i can see that it is that feature which makes his work pop. Ben seems to work using a limited colour palette sometimes using only two colours. The simple vector shapes comes together to form cool little characters and i really like how he creates this noise around the edges to give off a really authentic printed look.   

I can see that Aslett likes to use the empty space to colour various parts of his image which is a technique that i can use on my work which would allow me to gain an additional colour. 

Aslett also uses the noise to give his characters life and i think that in the picture above he really utilizes the noise as it animates the guy screaming. 

Simple semi circles are used here to create a wave, i should try out simple shape making to see what i can generate using as little effort as possible. 

                                              Jack Teagle 

Jack Teagle was also featured in the powerpoint and i took a liking to him straight away. His characters   are simple yet detailed, the body and facial features are drawn in a simplistic way whilst the definition utilizes a lot of detail. 

I really like the different textures that Teagle creates in his images, his combination of curved and straight lines help to give the scene depth and body. Teagle seems to use a limited colour palette like Aslett though Teagle uses more shades of the same colour to seperate the characters.  

I really like this one, the simplicity of the images work really well especially when they are all collected together like this. Teagle has a big series of prints like these, a lot of them include famous iconic characters such as the red power ranger, skeletor, Darth vader and spiderman. Printing this way would be something to experiment with though i could imagine that it would be hard to line up. These simple little characters look soo cool and are really effective so i think this is the direction that i would like to take with the second stage of my project.
This picture also reminds me of the work that Ben Newman did for one of the Nobrow magazines. Newman did a print with a load of monsters all mashed up together using simple shapes that are very similar to the print above though Newman used a lot more colour layers in his print.  

I love the random chaos which is created here in this scene, again all of them are very simple but together they look great. I personally think that it is the unusual colour palette and the weird textures that really make Teagles work stand away from the background.

Ben Newman 

Ben Newman has a very similar style to Ben Aslett when it comes to his prints. They both use a very limited colour palette and they use simple block shapes which overlap to make a character. Newman also utilizes the noise around the image to give the picture a authentic look. 

Newman is known for his digital skills as well as his numerous collaborations with Nobrow. His graphic work is crude yet detailed and leaves nothing to the imagination. Newman really likes to experiment with the overlap of colours in his work and he likes to use the newly created colour to fill in the negative space as well as adding small details to his characters. I should look at what colours mix well together when they overlap, i could do this using photoshop and multiplying my layers. 

Newman uses a wide colour palette throughout his work and although most of his prints are outrageously coloured, some of them are really subtle like this one. 

This is one of Newmans more complex prints and it even has shading around the eyes which i think he generated using a colour overlap. I would really like to try and make my own characters in this style though i wouldn't be able to use as many colours because i will only have 1 screen.






This was the design that i mentioned near the start of the post. Newman has mashed up a load of monsters and weird creatures using this grid and a load of random shapes. I like how geometric it looks in it's early stages and you can really see how much effort he has put into each character. His blog contains all of the stages that he went through to get to the end result and it was pretty interesting to watch it come together. 




This is the final image and it looks amazing!
i can definitely do something like this and i think it would be good for me to work really loose as i normally pay soo much attention to the lines and the detail. I need to start thinking about what elements i can have in my image, mayeb i should make a grid for my character ideas and to see how they interact with each other. 

Summer poster submissions!!

my first choice 

                                                My second choice in a different colour