The Weekly Print

Back Up Soon

BT — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 04:52:59 +0000

If anyone new is checking out this site after having talked to me at the Stumptown Comics Fest, I thought I should put this post here so you don’t get scared off by the last post. This site will be updated again starting next week, so please check back.

Sorry, I’m Out

BT — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 03:54:38 +0000

Those of you regularly checking the site may have noticed that there was no print last week, and hasn’t been one this week. I haven’t had the time to post about it, but I’ve made the difficult decision to end the Weekly Print challenge (something my prideful and incredibly stubborn personality feels horrible about), but the site will go on.

Currently, I am a full-time student, and work as a freelance illustrator/designer, comic book artist, and printmaker on top of the work I was doing for this site. I was doing a bit of personal assessment last week and amongst a few other smaller things, the biggest issue that made me decide to end the challenge was that the time restraints were, on occasion, making me release prints of a quality that I has not 100% proud of. It’s also interesting to note that those same prints seem to be the ones that y’all don’t care for either, just in terms of sales (or lack thereof).

So, what does this mean for the site? Before I started the site, I was printing something nearly every week anyways, so I’m going to start covering all the different things I print, whether it be art prints, t-shirts, comic book covers, product packaging, what have you, and I will go into the process of planning and printing those things more frequently. I also want to keep doing the DIY informational posts, and am in the middle of getting one together right now. So, in short, the site will be a lot more coverage into the life and methods of someone that does a lot of screenprinting, not merely a vehicle for art prints.

So, I hope you keep coming back to the site, the prints that have been completed will stay up for sale, as will any future art prints released through the site. Thanks for all the positive support regarding the Weekly Print challenge, I’m sorry I could not complete it as planned, but I hope that you will enjoy the prints I release from here on out even more.

What a Difference a Frame Makes

BT — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:31:03 +0000

“ZAP” got picked to be part of a juried art show here in Portland in April. Through the years, I’ve only had a few people send me photos after they’ve framed one of my prints, and most stuff I do for other gallery shows is in the painting realm, so actually getting to see one of my prints, framed and in person, is kind of a rare treat; makes everything pop a bit more I think.

The First Twelve

BT — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:44:39 +0000

Well, technically, 11 of the first 12 as ZAP, being larger, isn’t printed on the same test print, but still, this is where we’re at. If you missed my post about this earlier in the year, I am making a handful of test prints onto which I pull every color of every weekly print. By the end of the year, each of these prints will have around 120 layers, and they already have a different weight and presence when compared to a regular print.

I think it’s interesting to follow the progress in the animation, to see how the colors lay on top of each other, and how sometimes a certain print will just kind of reset the whole deal.

Mmm, Bacon

BT — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:03:38 +0000

I like bacon, and I reckon a lot of you reading this do too. If you don’t, that’s cool, but this little piggy in the print sure loves it. This is also print number 12 of the year, it feels really strange to think I’m already almost 25% done with this challenge.

Two colors, 8″ by 12″

Available for $15 in the Weekly Print store!

Also, a big thank you to those who chimed in on my last post. I’ll work up a DIY post on my pre-press process and post it soon. Thanks for watching!

Anyone Out There?

BT — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:53:35 +0000

I haven’t done an informational, DIY screenprinting post in a while, is there anything specific someone out there wants to see covered?

If not, I’m leaning towards covering washout, or part of my pre-printing process (drawing, scanning, color separation, etc).

The Sea Bastard

BT — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:59:41 +0000

Last summer, I created the character of the Sea Bastard for an art show at Tender Loving Empire. I have wanted to use him on some other things since, so why not a print?

Three colors, 8″ by 12″

Available for $15 in the Weekly Print store.

Utter Nonsense

BT — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 06:08:10 +0000

Whew, just under the wire this week, sorry for the delay. I was reading a bit of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus over the last week, and all I can say is that this is what came out of me. Just out of curiosity, I did a search of anagrams of “Utter Nonsense” and some of them are pretty great, so I might make a companion piece for next week, which will hopefully be done earlier in the week than this one.

Two colors, 8″ by 12″

Available for $15 in the Weekly Print store.

Ghosts

BT — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:33:44 +0000

Something a little different for print number nine. About two years ago, while fooling around in a college class, I doodled the inspiration for this image. The original has been hanging in my bathroom ever since and always garners a few chuckles from visitors to my apartment. So, I decided it was time to make it a little more widely available.

Two colors, 8″ by 12″

Available for only $15 in the Weekly Print store.

Put Your Coat On

BT — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:57:21 +0000

Alright, today we’re going to cover how I coat screens with emulsion and dry them safely. First off, you’ll need your screen, some emulsion (I use Ulano QTX), and a method to get the emulsion on the screen evenly. If there’s one piece of screenprinting equipment that I cannot recommend enough, it’s a scoopcoater (That’s the metal trough thing in the photo, in case you don’t know).

I started out putting a bead of emulsion on my screen and spreading it with a squeegee. That method does work if it’s your only option. I did that for about 6 months, until I got a scoopcoater and everything became so much easier and far, far less messy.

Fill your scoopcoater about half full of emulsion. If you overfill it, spills happen, like this. I didn’t get any pictures while actually coating screens because I needed both of my hands, sorry. Using the sharper edge of the scoopcoater, I pull one coat of emulsion on both sides of the screen. Coat the back side of the screen first, and then the squeegee side. This will give you the smoothest surface when you actually get to printing. I dry my screens (squeegee side up) in a large cardboard box that I normally store under my printing table. Conveniently, the boxes that my new screens get shipped to me in happen to be perfectly screen-sized.

When you’re done coating, don’t forget to take a plastic card or small squeegee and scrape the leftover emulsion from you scoopcoater back into your tub of emulsion, it’s still good.

To make the drying process much faster, I have a flap cut in one side of the box, just large enough in which to stick a small desk fan. I can stack five or six screens in one box, each one separated by pieces of scrap wood, as you can see in the photo. This gives you enough room for the fan’s breeze to fully circulate around your screens.

Once the emulsion starts to dry, it becomes light sensitive, so I have a large piece of heavy fabric that I can hang over the window to block out all light. Any room lights should be off at this point too, unless you have a red or yellow darkroom safety light.

If, like me, you’re drying your screens in a room you use for other purposes, and you can’t get away with having your room in total darkness for a few hours, you can also drape that same fabric over the fan side of your box.

With the fan on constantly, I’ve gotten away with exposing screens that have been drying for about 3 hours. If I’m not in such a rush, after an hour or so, I take the fan out, close the flap in the box, and just let the screens chill in their dark box until I need them the next day or whenever.

That’s it, if you have any questions or comments, shoot. This week’s print is going to be a bit weird, but probably won’t post until Thursday or Friday, so make sure you check back.