September's Print is on it's way! (Patreon)

Hello! September’s print is in the mail and headed to Riso subscribers now! Keep a lookout for it this week if you’re domestic or next week for International packages!

I’m so excited to share the first print I’ve made since my move to Los Angeles from New York. It was sad saying goodbye to the SVA RisoLAB but I know I’ll be back there soon. I asked my friend Arlin if I could print this month’s Riso print with him and he was kind enough to let me come over and print myself! He has his own personal Riso with a home set up that’s very inspiring. The room he prints in is smaller than he says he’d like but he’s set it up so everything is easily accessible and tidy. The Riso fits just perfectly and all you need on top of that is a desk for paper and a place to put a computer! I’m used to a lot of space in the RisoLAB so I was worried what having a home Riso set up would look like but now I’m not so worried about having too ‘little’ space! 

Arlin was super patient with me as he walked me through his Risograph process and helped me get used to his printing set up. Every generation of Riso works differently and, depending on what operating system you use, the digital print display can vary significantly. The sounds were also completely different from what I’m used to! I felt like a mother hearing another child’s cries and completely over reacting to what each sound meant, hah! In the end printing went very smoothly and we figured out a good price to settle on for my use of his space, supplies and time. 

Arlin also has a Risograph subscription, but his is for postcards, you should check it out! 

So! About the print!: 

I wanted to use this print to only work in green and yellow so I could focus on simple values next to pretty complicated line art. I was looking back at some of my earlier prints where I used green and yellow with scratchy crazy line and wanted to revisit that style again, combined with this slightly cleaner line I’ve been working in lately. I really like the warm lime green the combined colors make and wanted to focus on getting a variation of nice tones using just those colors. Here's a breakdown of the two grey files I sent to the printer! The first is the green and the second is the yellow. 

I had to copy the line art a few times so I could make it much thicker, originally it was very faint and hard for the machine to read and didn't look how I intended it to look. That usually happens with my line art. I draw it pretty faint and then have to copy the layer a few times for the machines to read it fully. 

Here's the yellow layer!

I love the gradients with simple colors so I had to make sure to add one in this! 

My layers were a bit crazy for this one but I separate the shapes out like flats and then I adjust the values for each 'shape' until I'm happy with the values. It's easier for me to do this in black and white values only because I know how dark each color will replicate...but when I add a third color I can no longer just work in value, I have to have a color mock-up as well. 

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks,
Natalie