Jesse Arbor invited me to create the cover for the Dog Bowl Zine - “Evil” Edition, with the intention of printing it at Moore College on the risograph printer.
Below is the finished 4 color print in Blue, Pink, Yellow and Black. I also liked this simplified 2 color print with pink and black:
Evil……hmmmmm. I’ll talk about my process creating and printing this illustration.
I began with many sketches, (some on napkins):
I liked the idea of claw marks of a cat scratch, using my brush pen to make it dramatic.
Since the theme of this publication was “Evil” and it is for the Dog Bowl Zine Club - it made sense that cats are evil.
Time to commit to one sketch and ink it.
The line art became the “key plate” - the part of the print that contains the majority of the key's detail and is usually printed in black.
With this specific risograph printer, one must print each color one at a time, on top of itself.
The prints come out quickly, but each color needs to be set up as a separate image file.
Below are examples of the yellow, pink and blue color files - printed individually as well as layered:
Using different colored paper in the riso printing process can be a fun way to see different color variations without using different colored inks.
Below is the same print in green, orange, red, blue, pink and beige colored papers.
The bright green looks super Evil!
And last but not least, here is a video of the risograph printing the black color on top of yellow, pink, and blue - the final prints!
Jesse says - hello!
Risograph printing for me is always is a lesson in control and letting go. I do all my coloring in Photoshop and try to plan as much as I can - but it always looks a little different once it comes out the printer. I like to allow for happy accidents as well as experiment with more painterly color layering as well as opacity changes.
This particular project was exciting to see on many different colored papers, as I originally designed the graphics for a beige background.
Hope you enjoyed learning more about the process of this piece!