ORLANDO WEEKLY ARTIST BOX //

"THE PROCESS"

Above is a quick look into how it was made. I started off with painting over the AWAKEN design and did some black paint washes to give it some grunge. I like to live by the rule "75% grunge" anything more and then it just becomes a mess. Using a mix of illustrating with markers and photoshop I cleaned up the designs to get them ready to print. I have been messing around with this halftone process for a while and really love how the two come together. To add the halftones I create a full layer of them in photoshop, layer mask the whole thing out, and just go back and paint in where I want the halftones to show up. You can really go crazy here and add a ton of shading ranges but I stick with a 25%, 50%, and 75% amount mostly. A light, mid, and dark shading range basically.

For the printing process I had to get a little creative. Normally you lay whatever you're printing down on what is called a pallet. Unfortunately a pre-assembled metal box I wanted to print on the side of can't really do that. So I figured "let's avoid the pallet all together and print it off to the side of the press. Using an assortment of large screen printing screens and 2x4s stacked up I got it to the perfect height. Carefully wedging the rotating head of press with C clamps so it wouldn’t wiggle while I printed it l everything was good to go. I used a heat gun with a laser thermometer to make sure the ink was cured at a proper temp. I planned on sealing this when its finished so it should hold the ink on even more after that.

The front plate of the newspaper box was a bit easier to print as it was removable. I used my t-shirt press for this one. The metal was harder to get to the curing temp though so I finished it off sandwiched in my heat press to insure it was really cured. I could have probably got away with just the heat gun but it's better to be safe than sorry.

To wrap everything up I used a satin polycrylic sealer and gave it two solid coats. Letting the the water-based black paint sort of bleed into the first coat a little. Adding to the grunge. Then once dried sealed it fully with the second. If you don’t want your wash to bleed when you coat it use a spray sealer for the light first coat or use an acrylic paint for your wash. I like the organic grunge, some people do not.

If you have any questions about this process and want a more detailed explanation to something specific feel free to shoot me an email. I hope you all have a great start to your new year and have a great day.

Cheers,

Jason Littlefield