Over the past few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of printing the World Tour posters for Arms and Sleepers. I ended up with an edition of 105 of these prints. 8 Colors. They are 20in.-26in. Signed and numbered. With this print I went a little different direction then any other print I’ve done before. I encorporated a photo element of an American astronaut testing on a flight simulator back in the day when people use to have to sit in these chairs side by side for days to test cabin pressure. The image is very subtle and hidden within the textures created below and above it. First by these 3 layers of hand brushed lines, 2 blues and 1 green. I actually brushed out these lines before settling on the astronaut photo but if you look when the brushed layers were all printed together before the other layers were places I feel like you can see a ghost of this astronaut, but weirdly they were not drawn to necissarily match the photo. The 5th layer of webbing that is all hand drawn was then placed down, then the dotted photo. The border and text were printed together after the photo using almost the same color. The last layer on this print is a clear glossy layer of dots covering the whole printed area plus some of the border. I’ve never printed with this base before and I feel like it came out pretty perfectly and adds this last almost hidden element to this print. Photo’s of this are below.
These posters will be available very soon through Arms And Sleepers on their webstore here. On the road with them on their tour. If you are not familiar with this band I really suggest checking them out. Their next show in New England is at T.T the Bears place. View all the info here.
And if your running a little short on cash lately then they have some free downloads at their website here.
First started out with a layer of white under all of the printed area. The paper used was a Speckletone Kraft Paper made by French Paper. The Best around!
Followed by the layers of brushed color which have the text Arms And Sleepers left out of it to let the text be white in the end, unlike the darker digital version.
Way more Process Photos after the jump!
I also upgraded to wearing an apron while I print during this print! I decided I actually need some clothes without ink on them.
The 3rd layer of blue was this darker kind of gray looking ink mixed with this very shiny blue, so each print the blues may be slightly different.
The photo layer is a black and white photo made into a layer of small dots, this layer was printed twice to add depth to it and make it a little darker.
This layer was mostly black with that same blue mixed into it at random times right on the screen, this also makes each print color be slightly different.
Throughout this project I had many other projects and things come up that delayed the printing of this A lot. I started and finished the Museum project which is a few posts before this.
Had to go see Brown Bird when they came around to The Oak & the Ax in Biddeford!
I also moved into a much larger and brighter studio in the Artist Studio Building. It was pretty tough to keep up with projects in this move since all of my things had to be packed up and moved.
It was great moving out of my old studio, it was just getting to small for the amount of work I was doing and having to store all of the work while I was trying to work in the same area, my new space has a seperate storage area, so my workplace can stay super clean! Above is Jess in my old spot. Can you guess where my desk chair was?
Ok, back to the poster!
The border was kept until last to make sure that all of the colors fit inside and under the black border.
Lastly was the layer of transparent dots. This was made from a mixture of a few mediums. Mostly Golden Regular gloss Gel and Liquitex Super gloss medium mixed into it. The plastic cup to the left of the bottom picture if the clear mixture. Also a hint of glow in the dark ink was also added at random, so a few of these things might actually glow!!! You wont know until you take it home and put it in the dark.
This is the screen with the dots, this layer was printed in sections because this print is fairly larger than most that I make so printing it in sections makes it easier physically on myself and comes out cleaner most of the time as long as the layers aren’t connected, and these were not.
Here’s some detail shots.
