Gig poster printing with SAVWO

I've been back to Hot Bed Press recently, this time I'm doing a course which is specifically aimed at making screen printed gig posters. Our tutor John Powell-Jones AKA Savage Wolf or SAVWO is a freelance illustrator and screen printer. As soon as I saw his work (see his Flickr here and MySpace here) I knew that I wanted to do the course, as his work which features zombies, werewolves and all other kinds of beasties, is right up my street. This time I decided to create some posters for the 'semi-fictional' band The Spooked Hearts which basically consists of me and my husband and a whole lot of noise-making that never really goes anywhere.

The idea for the poster actually originated from one of my husband's doodles which I found lying around. I think it amuses him greatly when I find these drawings and proclaim them to be genius. Maybe it is an exaggeration but there is something about the way he sketches without thinking that always seems to result in a truly surreal outcome. When I found his little drawing of a dancing harlequin boy with crosses for eyes and a giant tear falling down his face I knew I could develop it into a poster for our band. Below are the results: first the original poster design, then the resulting prints in two colour ways. We also printed onto t-shirts and John showed us how to easily set up a similar arrangement at home so that we could print there.

Beautiful Losers

Finally got my own copy of Beautiful Losers; a truly inspiring documentary about a group of skaters/diy-artists/punks/outsiders and their unique creations and philosophies on life. It features a number of artists who are often classed as key to the primarily 90s 'Mission School' scene which centered in an area of San Francisco including the legendary and deceased Margaret Kilgallen, her widow Barry McGee and Chris Johanson. The film really captures the collaborative nature of the work which was produced and shown in makeshift galleries in squats and warehouses. Whilst being a really positive and uplifting film it also has a bittersweet edge particularly due to the death of Kilgallen who was so obviously central to the movement.

Margaret Kilgallen

Barry McGee

Chris Johanson

Aaron Rose is also featured as the founder of the notorious New York based 'Alleged' gallery that hosted some very wild and extraordinary events. What I hadn't realised was that Rose is also an artist himself and has more recently produced some intricately hand painted suitcases (below) that really capture the folk art roots that have so clearly influenced the Beautiful Losers.

Whitworth Art Gallery 'Tactile/Tangible' workshop

A couple of weeks ago me and my fellow colleagues were invited to take part in an afternoon workshop at the Whitworth Art Gallery which is literally a few minutes walk from the college where I work. As teachers we don't often get let out of the cage (or classroom) very often so we were literally salivating at the thought of getting to produce something big, fun and collaborative. The brief was fairly loose and was based on the themes tangible and tactile (these two gorgeous books below were available to provide ideas). The materials we were provided with ranged from scraps of paper and fabric to stickle bricks and coloured tape, however everything was in bold primary colours which worked really well against the grey of the upstairs gallery at the Whitworth within which we worked. The results are as below. It was certainly fun, in fact I'm not sure who enjoyed it most, us or Andrew who kindly volunteered to be our living mannequin.

Nicholas Saunders

It really is a small world. Whilst at Hot Bed Press I noticed some work lying around by one of my favourite screen printers Nicholas Saunders. I first noticed his work when it was used in a couple of Howies catalogues such as the Three Bays edition (below) and looked him up on the internet to find he was a bit of a screen printer extraordinaire (Nicholas Saunders website here). Anyway it turns out that he's a local lad and in fact went to the same high school as me. He now resides in London and in 2007 was voted as one of the top ten hot UK illustrators by the Independent.

It seems the hype certainly paid off as he was recently commissioned by Warner Brothers to produce art work for the new Harry Potter film (see below). Inspiring stuff!

Read more at Creative Review here.

Photo Screen printing at Hot Bed Press

Currently I'm in the midst of a 5 week screen printing course (one evening a week) at Hot Bed Press in Salford. I really didn't know what to expect but Mandy our tutor is absolutely brilliant, really patient and clearly very enthusiastic about screen printing. So far we have approached it using both stencils and by exposing screens and although it can get quite technical and there is a lot to remember I am determined to get really good at it as the results are just so satisfying. Below are some of my outcomes which vary in quality but which also have a lo-fi feel which I appreciate and think is rather appropriate for a gig poster.

Original Photoshop image of Beth Ditto of The Gossip that I traced and made into a stencil (below)

The resulting single-colour print, one of the better ones (below)

Adding another colour brings with it inevitable complications however when your registration goes awry (below) it can actually look rather good.

Spiritualized poster turned into a two-colour screen print (below). The registration on the cloud was particularly tricky.

Original poster for Silversun Pickups (below).

And resulting print (below). This one turned out to be my nemesis as it didn't seem to matter how hard I tried I was always missing some of the finer detail. Mandy assured me that it is possible to produce very fine prints using a screen but that possibly some of the photographic emulsion may have hardened on the screen and was blocking it. There was nothing else to do but to start from scratch and expose the screen again. Unfortunately however, the same happened again which meant that it must have been a fault of the original photocopy (not dark enough).

Feeling a bit defeated I decided that this poster may just have to remain as a digital image instead. I have tried (below) to create a similar screen printed look using Photoshop.

Barcelona

Just back from a quick trip to Barcelona. Inspiring as ever, Gaudi, Miro, Picasso and of course the endless graffiti and flypostering that can be seen down the backstreets and walkways. Bearing in mind I already have hundreds of similar photographs I tried not to get carried away, however I can't help but stop and stare every time I pass a particularly lovely arrangement of torn posters and neon lettering, each composition framed within a doorway or shuttered window. It made me think a lot about my new project and whether it might be interesting to post some of my posters in public spaces and return to them once they have been pasted over and battered by the weather.

New Year, New Idea.

So 2010 is the year when I finally get round to making the kind of art that interests me most of all, the kind of thing that I see in books and on walls and on other people's blogs and I think: that's the kind of thing I want to make. This was partly inspired by looking through this recently purchased book (below) which is a massive retrospective of some of the most successful rock poster artists that regularly feature on gigposters.com but also because I feel like so far on my Masters I have played it safe and created the sort of work that I've always made. Work which really doesn't excite me anymore.
So what do I actually plan to do, well my aim is to produce a poster for every gig I attended in 2009 (this totals around 30) as a kind of commemoration of that event. Unlike some gig poster art which at times can seem a bit random in it's content I am going to use each gig as a starting point for a poster that I feel really sums up the band and their music. I have already booked myself on to two screen printing courses as this seems like the most obvious way to produce the posters whilst also finally giving me an excuse to try out a technique that has fascinated me for some time. I feel really excited about this project and can't wait to get started!

2 pages from my sketchbook of posters gathered here, there and everywhere (above).