Pictures in an Exhibition

This weekend see's exhibition season taking off into full flight with not one but two exhibitions that I will be a part of.

The first being 'The debut solo poster exhibition by twoducksdisco', which will be happening in Middlesbrough at the Pop-Up Gallery.

It all kicks off at 7:30, Friday night and will have some special guest bands in the shape of Algiers and Ankles. I will also be there in person giving mini-seminars about screen-printing and the life & times of a poster artist. Plus i'll have stuff for sale, so bring your monies! Here's a Facebook event for it.

Secondly, I am also contributing a few screen-prints to 'Parkstrife'; an exhibition in the Sno!Lounge at Sno!Zone, Milton Keynes. Yes, you read that correctly, Sno!Zone.

This will be more a permanent exhibition for the lounge, where functions and other such events are held. There's a Facebook event for that too. Plus, a little interview that I did with Jibber Jabber; a snow sports blog at Sno!Zone.

Pictures from both events to follow next week.

Gotta Keep Movin'

Here is a new poster for Leeds based promotion team Hide & Seek, who are spreading their folky wings South-bound to Sheffield.

Apparently they'd be trying to book American folk singer Willy Mason for quite some time, so I wanted to create something special to mark the occasion for them.

Willy's first album feels like an extensive road trip on foot, so I wanted to create a triptych-style story board depicting his journey across Americana.

I know the H&S lads were pleased with it, so hopefully Willy is too...

Elk River

When I was asked to design a poster for the Six Organs of Admittance show at the Brudenell I instantly wanted to create a screen-print for the event. For the design I had a definite idea that I wanted to create a scene that illustrated the moods within Six Organs' sound palette.

When considering the screen-printed version of the poster, I decided to alter the design slightly by elongating the height of the poster, giving it a more dynamic impact. With regards to the 'empty space' at the top, with this I wanted to reflect the emptiness of Ben Chasny's music, where much of it is stripped back to guitar and voice.

I also decided to change the colour from a pastel-cream to a mint-blue / green. This was mainly because I have a lot of posters with cream / yellow in the palette and fancied a change. So here's a print process of me making the posters, starting with the first screen with the image burned into it and ready for print

Getting the first colour down.

The first colour on the posters, drying on the racks.

Printing the second colour, a soft pink.

The posters on the drying racks with the second colour completed.

The third image on the screen, depicting the temple and landscape to white the river runs, ready to be printed.

The third colour being printed on the posters. You can just about see the image through the ink.

The poster; cropped, signed & numbered, stamped and ready to be sold at the Brudenell.

A couple of close ups of the poster.

The posters sold really well at the gig and are now available in my Big Cartel poster shop. I've also put in the art print version of the design, which is the exact same height and width; just without any of the text.

So quick thanks to Nath at the Brudenell for letting me have the opportunity to print the posters, Kate at West Yorkshire Print Workshop for tips and hints during the printing process, Alex Steward for being a total dude; playing his first solo gig and it going really well and finally to Ben Chasny; for being a total stand-up dude and playing an incredible set.

Sirens

The mighty I Like Trains got back in touch recently, asking me to design their latest single 'Sirens'. I accepted and got thinking how best to illustrate the song.

My previous design for the band focussed on scale and the over-powering force of nature, which I wanted to explore with this design. So after watching the video, I was inspired at furthering the story told within.

The focal point of the the video being the 'abusive man' seemed like a good figure to use and I wanted to convey his shame and banishment from the shores for his actions. To illustrate his sense of failure as a human I encapsulated him within an 'sea-clock', which is a nautical-based version of the more traditional sand-clock. This links with themes studied through I Like Trains's latest LP 'He Who Saw the Deep'.

So now you've read about it, here are pictures the print session for the special edition 10" inserts:

Firstly, here are the tracing paper sheets, having been greased up with vegetable oil (to make them more transparent for the print process) and hanging up in my shower.

After the tracing paper had become suitably transparent I headed to WYPW to prepare the screens.

The next stage involves me coating the screen in Azocol and then burning the image (using high voltage UV light) to the screen.

A close up of the image.

Then it was time to mix the colour for the prints. Since i'd had to alter the design from being a multi-coloured / multi-layered design to a one-colour print, I had to create a colour that would be striking enough to work on it's own.

This is the paint on the screen after the first print. Hope they turned out OK...

Here they are lined up, ready to be cropped.

And here is the final cropped version, ready to be signed, numbered and stamped.

Close up.

Hopefully that's given you an insight into how I go about designing things and screen-printing. Unfortunately if you want to own one of these limited edition screen-prints they have all sold out but there are standard editions left over in the I Like Trains shop.