Solocrow — One Crow Against the World

Revived Technique

Posted on February 28th, 2008 by solocrow.
Categories: Generic Blatherings, Images.

It’s been ages since I’ve dabbled in many of the artistic techniques I was shuffled through as an ungrad in college. One I particularly despised at the time was a course in printmaking. Mind you, I had no bones with the professor, nor the material of the course itself — instead, I loathed the tedious nature of the process, which I partially chalk up to my general attitude of impatience at the time. On the other hand, relief printing *is* genuinely dilatory if done with any attention to craftsmanship.

Recently, I had the opportunity to revive my slumbering knowledge of printmaking when I was chosen as one of six finalists in a local competition involving the creation of theatrical posters. After submitting my resume, I was called in for an interview, at which time I was presented with the finalist’s project of creating a poster mock up for the musical Annie Get Your Gun. In addition to creating the specific show poster, there was mention that the visual style of the poster must be sustainable for any and all theatrical productions for the 2008 season. I chose relief printing, since it’s quite flexible in terms of color and design [yet distinguishable as a style].

I did a stylized sketch from an 1890s photo of a cowgirl [not being particularly taken with any of the images of Annie Oakley herself], and then scanned it in, cropped it, and dropped in a suitable font in Photoshop. Here’s the initial sketch and the photoshopped version including the font placement:

I then printed out the photoshopped version and hand transferred it to the printing matrix [in this case, I decided on doing a 9x12 linocut, as opposed to an actual woodcut in hopes of saving my hands]. Here’s the printing block after I’d finished carving it:

After a number of early prints where I spent time going back to the block to tweak things [removal of extraneous bits, etc.] I printed a set of “blanks” on sketchbook grade paper that I was willing to test drive color schemes on. The first image in this blog entry is one of two color tests I did using Prismacolor colored pencils over the water soluble ink. Here’s the second color test:

After reacquainting myself with the fickleness of inking [it's so damn easy to get it too light or too dark!], I switched to a higher quality all cotton paper for a set of prints that I intended to hand paint. Of course, seeing as I was using a water soluble ink, it was imperative that I sealed each pulled print with a good layer of sprayed-on acrylic coating — otherwise the ink would bleed horribly when I applied color. Here are some of my painted versions of the print:

There’s quite a bit of variation in each print — for example, the version of Annie in red is obviously a very light print, whereas the version of Annie in the green shirt was a rather heavy print. The painted versions did have a slight amount of bleeding despite the clear coat. *shrugs*

I found the process interesting, and surprisingly speedy [the project took me a week from start to finish, including research time, carving, printing, and coloring]. I’ll probably dabble in printmaking a little more, using less commercial themes, of course. I was politely notified earlier this week that while I was not the winner of the contest, the theater was interested in having my prints up for sale to the public in the lobby of the theater during the run of Annie Get Your Gun.

I agreed merely because I have no idea what the hell else I’d do with these things.

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