print

The Printed Project Hand In

| Rolo
Save The Koalas Black And White Variant.

I had a bit of a stressful week the past week when it came to getting my prints ready to hand in, the screenprinting process wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Printing two colours is definitely a lot harder than one because you’ve got to perfectly line up each colour layer. I originally made the mistake of screenprinting the black layer before the orange layer, so when I tried to print colour over the black, parts of the design just got enveloped in the void. It also became a lot harder to line up each layer and I ended up creating a lot of offset prints. The same thing happened a while ago with risograph printing, but I was certain that the problem woudn’t be repeated with screenprinting, I was wrong. I kept getting unlucky with mesh screens too, both of the ones I used had marks on them which stopped my design being transferred properly, so whenever I tried printing a layer, a small part of my design was missing, a problem I just had to work with. Nevertheless, something good did come out of printing the black layer first, I realised just how good the design looks on it’s own without colour and all of a sudden I had two different print variations I could sell to raise money for the Australian Bushfire support. I still needed to create the colour prints that I originally set out to create to make my project successful so I started a different series of prints where I printed the orange layer first and then the black one on top; it was a lot easier to line up the colour layers this way so the 2nd batch of prints ended up having a lot less offset which I was finally happy with.

This project has been a huge eye opener for me, there were times during screenprinting where I wished I had just let the risograph machine do the work for me, it would have been a lot quicker and potentially easier than manually lining up each layer. But I would’ve definitely got an offset with the risograph machine, no matter how quick it is, at least with screenprinting I have more control over how much offset my prints are. I can unequivocally say that I will do screenprinting again in the future and hopefully, with a lot of practice, the process will be even more successful next time. Overall the quality of prints could be better, but they could also be a lot worse and I still intend to try and sell the prints I have on Etsy to raise money for WWF Australia which is what their original purpose was, so ultimately I think I have done a good jo this project, no matter what grade I end up getting. I have handed in the project now so I guess all I can do is wait and see what grade I get, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit worried because the prints didn’t turn out perfectly, there are some inconsistencies and the brief asked for 10 perfect prints which I haven’t really achieved. I can always fix the inconsistencies manually with a paintbrush when it comes to sellng them so that they are of a high quality, but it wasn’t something I could do before handing them in because in a way it would be cheating and my tutors had already seen the inconsistencies so they’d know if I fixed them before handing in. I just hope the fact that the meshes I used were fault doesn’t affect my grade because it was completey out of my control. Agh.

https://pictofolio.com/news/8d6d9741-de19-4dea-99b6-c2a45b9b7dfc

On a slightly less stressful note, I think… we’re off for the next week again while the print projects get marked and once again we have been given a task to complete we return. This time we have been asked to create a cute character and enter it into the Pictoplasma #2Cute2Fail competition, now if you follow my art then you’ll know that I don’t really do cute, more creepy and macabre so this is definitely going to be a bit of a challenge for me. I’m up for it though, it’s never a bad thing being taken out of your comfort zone so I’ll do my best to create a super cute character, though I can’t guarantee it won’t be a bit on the creepy side.

Poland, Pollution and a few Presents

| Rolo

I’m finally in Poland! And I can’t breathe! Okay so I was surprised at how polluted the air in Warsaw is, I’ve been here before and didn’t have any problems last time, but this time, I feel as if my lungs have shrivelled and died. The city looks nice and I’m having a great time chilling with some amazing friends, but I feel ill at the same time. Being here is just making me realise even more how much of a problem pollution really is, I’ve seen locals wearing gas masks, there’s warnings about when it’s safe to go outside and nobody seems to drink the tap water because it smells funny. This has resulted in people either using water filters, or, for the most part, buying bottled water, which isn’t good! It’s just contributing to the ongoing plastic problem, I mean yes, the people I’m staying with recycle and so do many other people, which is great, but we still need to cut back on plastic; especially in a city that has highly toxic air. I don’t want to offend anyone with this post, I know that Warsaw can be a lovely place, there’s a lot of green areas and I’ve heard that the local government is trying to fight back against the pollution, I’m just making observations based on what I have seen, and felt (in my lungs) so far.

I brought a few of my prints with me to give to friends and family of my better half as presents for Christmas and so far, they’ve went down really well. The bug one went down especially well, which I think is largely because of the design and the fact the pollution message isn’t as on the nose as my Pollution Apocalypse design. I’ve found that some people think the Pollution Apocalypse poster is really heavy, but important still, and it’s meant to be… I wasn’t trying to get a positive response from that poster because it isn’t tackling a positive subject, pollution is heavy and it’s a reality that we really need to face. I’m just glad people have taken the design and have said that they like it at least, despite the fact it evokes a lot of difficult and real feelings, to me this means the design in a successful one which I’m so happy about. I’m going to have to get some reprints of the Lovecraftian bug and pollution apocalypse when I get back to college because they have been well received so far so I’m hoping that’ll be the case outside of people that I know and that I’ll be able to get myself out there more and maybe sell some on Etsy or something like that. It’d be nice if more people saw my art and what I’m trying to do because I really want to help make the world a better place, even if it’s just in a small way, but it’s hard to if nobody sees me.

Poland so far!!

I haven’t had the chance to go to any galleries so far because we were tired and have mainly been chilling with friends so far, but I’m hoping to either at the end of this week or next week when I travel to Krakow, I’ve done some research and there’s a really interesting poster gallery there that is run by a family, they’ve been collecting posters for years and their collection features posters from Polish artists, as well as artists from around the world. I think it’ll be invaluable to me to see poster art from different cultures, especially for the print project because I have been making posters so far and sometimes struggle with how to layout my design, seeing how other people have done it will definitely be a beneficial venture. I am really enjoying my time here though, I have some amazing friends here and wish I didn’t have to move on to the next place.

Don’t Panic, It’s Only Hand-In Day

| Rolo
I need to take my own advice.

Well… Today was a bit of a mess, the good news is that I finally handed in the Character Design project, the bad news is it took me the entire day to get there. Today was an anxiety day and a bad one at that, I ran out of anxiety meds and barely slept last night trying to make sure everything was perfect and ready to hand in, which in hindsight wasn’t the best idea; no pills and no sleep makes me a stressed boy. All throughout the day I watched as people rushed to finish their project, spend a few minutes handing it in digitally and go home, whereas despite having my project done before going to uni, I was still the last person to go home because I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to format my artwork correctly to send off to the submissions dropbox, nor could I figure out how to print out my character boards and final illustration, despite having done this many times before. My brain just was clearly on vacation today. I guess it is over now and I can rest easy knowing that I have handed in the best I could do at the time. In the future, I am so going to have to manage my time more effectively and prepare for the fact that things are most likely going to go wrong on hand in day. I need to have everything sorted and ready to hand in a whole 24 hours before hand in day so that I don’t end up having to stay up until a ridiculous hour before going to uni. Hopefully this way I can be properly rested and in a better mental state to deal with anything that goes wrong on hand in day, because to be perfectly honest, the more things went wrong, the worse my mental state got, and I basically had a complete breakdown which could have been avoided.

As I expected, we’re off next week and have been given a research task for the upcoming project to be handed in by Monday. There are a lot of artists and companies to research on the list, more than we have been given before, which I’m pretty sure is due to the fact that not everyone on the course necessarily does a lot of research, something that has been mentioned in class previously. Hopefully this doesn’t apply to me because I spent a lot of time doing my research for the Skaadi project, nevertheless I will do my best to complete the whopping 11 people/companies to research that the tutors have given us plus another 3 of our choice in just over a week, it’s a good thing I enjoy writing!! The upcoming project looks like one I will really enjoy though, it seems to be a print based project and we’ll be doing risograph printing (something I’ve seen done but haven’t tried before) relief printing (I’ve done lino cut before with varying results) and screen printing which is the one I am looking forward to the most because during the final project on my level 3 course I did screen printing for the first time in my life and managed to get my first distinction ever, so I’ve got high hopes for it this time.

I’m going to spend the next week delving into the world of printing and research artists that I feel could influence my style this project, I’m thinking about going down a more macabre route this time, while still linking it to current world events. I enjoy making sci-fi/fantasy and horror tropes and gothic comment on the modern world. Besides, my main interests generally fall between sci-fi/ fantasy and horror, I did fantasy last time with Skaadi the demon elf, so now it’s time for something a bit on the dark side. I haven’t been doing a lot of my own art lately and I don’t think I’m going to have much time to in the foreseeable future with uni, so I guess I’m going to have my make my own artwork my university work.