Sparky's Dream

Hello there

So as I may have definitely mentioned before, I shall be exhibiting a selection of my screen-printed posters at Poster Roast at the aptly named Black Heart Pub in London. This event coincides with Camden Crawl, an event which features over 200 bands playing at over 40 venues.

As an exhibiting artist at Poster Roast I was presented with the opportunity to design and print a poster for a band playing at the weekend. From the selection I picked Teenage Fanclub, although only being familiar with their 'hits'.

After doing some research into the band, turns out I love them, bonus. So I set about creating a poster based around the lyrics from one of my favourite jam's of theirs; 'If she lived in space, man I'd build a plane' from Sparky's Dream.

So after creating the image, I set off to the West Yorkshire Print Workshop in Mirfield to get my screen-printing face on. Watch, as the story unfolds...

The acetates lined up, ready to be burned to the screens

When printing I usually have an idea of what I want the colours to be but if they deviate from my mental images then it's generally OK. This time however I wanted the colours to be precise to the digital file that I'd worked on, so I printed it off and constantly referred to it, getting the colours just right

Printing the first colour

The first colour printed, this silver-ish, grey has a slight metallic tinge, which is always nice

The second colour being printed

Light blue is down

I then managed to run out of time in Mirfield as the joint was closing... Mad panicking ensued only to be relieved by the ever-lovely Calum Harris whose work you can see here. So the next day I went to 'The Grungeon' to print the final colour

The final screen in place for the third colour

The third and final colour is finally down

All the prints drying out

The final print, all cropped (34cm x 25cm), signed & numbered, stamped and ready for their epic journey to see the Fannies on Saturday and then from my Big Cartel page from Monday 3rd May.

A close up of the poster

Another close up of the poster

Thanks for reading / looking at the pictures / both / all three. Hope you all find it as interesting to read as the process is to complete. As always each poster is completely unique due to the methods involved in screen-printing, which is what makes it all so much fun.

That just leaves me to say I can't wait for the weekend. Seeing old friends, relatives, Teenage Fanclub, Pulled Apart By Horses and general merriment. I hope y'all have a grand weekend too, whatever mischief it is that you get up to.

Adios

Thunder Road

Hello world

First off, the title of this blog in no way relates to the post, its just the sun is out and it seems fitting to be listening to Bruce Springsteen whilst I sit in my shaded room.

Moving on swiftly, I have recently completed a few things for a new venue in Nottingham called Spanky Van Dykes. From my pitch that I sent to them they selected my hand-rendered type face as their main logo. They also picked an illustration from the batch to use for their menus, which was a bonus. Hopefully I'll be able to head back at some point to grab some photos of the joint but their opening party sounds like its going to be a riot...

Whilst you're down there I can strongly recommend the Star City exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary. The exhibition is dedicated to the art that fronted the Soviet Sphere's race to the moon and their complete fascination with sci-fi and space. The exhibition combines a nice mix of poster-art, sound and film installations, sculpture and photography, so there is something for everybody.

That leads me nicely onto my next segment; my friend and No Culture Icons head honcho Liam Henry has just uploaded a sweet new selection of photos onto his Blogspot. I'm not sure if I was aware of this as another output of Liam's great work but this blog is well worth a quick visit. Do that by clicking here.

And finally, I purchased an old camera a few weeks back and have finally gotten around to sorting out some film for it. It cost me £20 with 2 lenses, a flash, a case and some creative filters that look like they're from the '70's. All this from Leeds finest charity shop; Poverty Aid. Thank you old friend... This weekend I'm off to Knaresborough and after looking at Liam's photography, I'm feeling quite inspired. I doubt they'll turn out any good but I'm looking forward to going a bit snap happy.

Hope y'all have a good weekend!

Blood of a Dove

Well hey, the sun's out

So a few months back I was asked by Ash of Iron Wagon to design and screen-print a poster for the mighty Kong. I was already familiar with Kong's noisy output so I wanted to create something a bit outside of my comfort zone.

I printed the posters at my good chum Calum 'No Trust' Harris' house after a mix-up with bookings at WYPW. This also lead to paper stock issues and so I ended up printing on 130 gsm paper. Now this is a bit thinner than what I usually print on, as paint has a tendancy to make thinner paper / card bend when printing large areas of colour.

Below depicts our day printing in the 'Dungeon'... Here's Calum and myself drying the screens out with the images burned onto them. Good to see men at work... The first screen in place Mixing the first colour, which after inheriting some gold of Mr. Drew Millward, I decided to make a gold / copper metallic hybrid The second screen ready and in place for the black paint. This is actually quite terrifying... ''You're telling me they're lined up for a slaughter-house?'' The final poster, cropped and ready to take to the show tonight So there you go, they came out quite nice but due to the paper crumpling the way in which it did I will be selling them for super-cheap at the show and if there's any left, then they'll be online next week. That's the way screen-printing goes though, lots of lessons to be learned along the way... ho-hum.

Next up in my screen-printing schedule is Belle & Sebastian Teenage Fanclub, which should be good fun as they're playing at one of my favourite venues; Koko, as part of Camden Crawl 2010.

Cheers for reading. See y'round!