I curated and took part in a Moby Dick themed art show at the Independent Publishing Resource Center in February. I had just finished reading Moby Dick, and one of my favorite parts of the book is the descriptions of all the different tools used in early 19th Century whaling.
11 by 17, two color screenprint, and available in my Etsy shop.
So, pretty much the reason I consider myself a printmaker to this day, is that I discovered linoleum block printing nearly ten years ago. I have since moved on to screenprinting as well as other print forms, but I’m taking a letterpress class right now and one of our assignments was to carve a lino block and print it on the press. The previous assignment was to set type for a pangram, a sentence containing all 26 letters of the alphabet. I decided to illustrate my pangram as a two-color linoleum block.
I have a few of these available if anyone is interested.
Wizards!
I printed these 5 by 7 screenprints to sell at shows and give away with other print orders. And, it’s how I feel about anyone reading this right now!
I made some tearaway, screenprinted shop calendars last year, but they proved too popular to last very long, so with 2011 soon upon us, I decided it was as good a time as any to make more.
Each calendar is 6″ by 10″ and is a four color screenprint on chipboard, and of course, it’s also a calendar.
They are available for $15 through the Banner Year Press store and I posted some process pics over at Flickr.
CALL TO ARTISTS: I’m working on putting together a new multi-artist book to be put out through Banner Year Press before the end of the year. I’ve decided to focus on a few more weird art books for a while before I start publishing solo artist books. The book will be entitled Terrible Beasts and will feature nothing but doodles of taxidermy. Curious? There’s a lot more information and full submission guidelines here.
I made these letterpressed thank you notes quite a while ago for people who sent me gifts for graduating from PNCA back in June. Handset type in dark green, and the bus is silver, on pale mint cardstock. I made a few too many of these, if anyone would like to purchase one, I will have them at Portland’s Crafty Wonderland on December 11th-12th, and through Etsy after that.
I haven’t been posting much lately as I have been a little under the weather for the last few weeks. I’ve been working on stuff though, so will have a bit to show soon.
Also, sometime before the end of the year, I will be combining this blog with an updated version of my illustration portfolio. I’m going to keep the radrobot.org URL but have it forward to bigtimeillustration.com. I think it’s long been time for me to combine the two.
A few months ago, while on a trip to Tacoma, WA, I sat in a park and drew this seagull which stood motionless for minutes, like it was modeling for me. For some reason, I added the phrase underneath it in my sketchbook.
The drawing has always gotten a big response from people, so I decided to make a small print.
5″ by 7″, four color screenprint on heavy paper.
Available for only $5 in my Etsy shop.
Every year in Portland there is a city-wide music happening called MusicfestNW. My friends at Tender Loving Empire asked me to design the poster for their showcase last year, and I must’ve done an OK job because they asked me to do the same this year.
All the bands involved in this show are ones that I have seen multiple times and really like, so that’s always a bonus. The show is in early September, right at the end of summer/beginning of fall, and I liked the concept of someone making the last ditch summer effort of making some cutoffs, even though it is about to cool down soon.
I designed this to be a three-color poster, the first being a split-fountain gradient to re-create the sunburned feet/pale legs. The paper is a light blue, which will show through in the cutoffs and flip-flops.
Then a dark blue layer.
And here they are after a final, deep pink layer.
How about a process post about flocking? If you don’t know, flocking is made up of powdered rayon fibers, which when adhered to any object with the proper adhesive, creates a fuzzy, felt-like texture. All 77 contributing artist copies, as well as the first 200 of the run of 500 will have the “BEARFIGHT” title flocked in white.
Here’s my ever faithful screenprinting setup with my makeshift flocking box next to it. I did the first 50 covers myself as a test, but will have assistants later, so it was helpful to have the box right next to the screen.
The company through which I bought the flocking fibers also sells a water-based adhesive which has a lengthy enough working time to be able to screenprint with it just like ink.
Since only a small part of the cover was to be flocked, I used a box just large enough for half the cover. The bottom of the box is lined with wax paper, so all that extra flocking that’s piled there can be dumped out easily and placed back into the flocking applicator bottle (you can just barely see the tip of it in the lower right, it’s just a plastic squeeze bottle).
With the adhesive freshly printed, place the cover inside the box, and puff the flocking fiber over the sticky area until covered. Flip over and tap to remove excess fiber.
This is what you’re left with after tapping; still too much. The water-based adhesive can be cured in a 300 degree oven for 5 minutes, then brushed clean with a soft paint brush or towel.
The final, flocked cover. It’s very visually subtle in person, but it feels really awesome.
Hope you enjoyed the process. Now I just need to bind them and Bearfight should be up for sale by the end of the month!
For those of you who are also interested in buying my upcoming thesis book, B is for Beard, from which I’ve been posting pages this last week, I’ve set up a pre-order special for both books. It costs quite a chunk of change to put out the larger and larger books I’ve been working on lately - especially since B is for Beard is two-color offset printed - so any and all pre-orders will really help make the process a little easier, financially. Pre-orders will also include a Bearfight! button and whatever else I decide to throw in your package.
(Bearfight will be for sale separately by the end of the month, but B is for Beard will not be printed until the end of April, so any pre-ordered Bearfight copies will not ship until early May, along with B is for Beard.)
Thanks for reading so much!
You regular viewers may remember this image from a few weeks ago. My school is putting on a tarot card themed print exchange this year, and I finally printed these up late last week. I made a polymer plate of the image and letterpressed them (at the IPRC) onto French Paper’s Pop-Tone Whip Cream paper.
The first 41 prints of the limited edition of 48 prints are for the print exchange, so I’ve only got the last seven up for sale in my Etsy shop.
Also: There’s about three weeks left to turn in your BEARFIGHT submissions!
Logic nerds should get some too, right? I’ve had this Valentine’s Day card idea kicking around my head for months, and when it came down to it, they almost didn’t get made. But they did, and just in time with Valentine’s Day just over two weeks away.
These would of course be fine to give to anyone you love, even long after Valentine’s Day.
Each is printed on acid-free cardstock, is blank inside, and includes a matching envelope. Available for $5 (including shipping) by using the Paypal button below.