Sacramentum (the Oath) (Patreon)

Hello! I hope everyone's staying safe and healthy in these crazy times. By now you should be receiving your packages, or for international orders this might take another week. I hope this is a nice surprise in the midst of so much anxiety. It was nice to draw and dive into as a distraction while all of this was developing. Inside this package is this 'Sacramentum (the oath)' print along with a few small note cards for names, or whatever you'd like! I liked the design for my business cards and wanted some blanks so I made a ton. 

Making the Print:

I did a lot more research for this piece than I usually do, which was fun! I love history, mythology, period costumes and etymology so I just wrapped all that up into this print.

I was looking at the Bayeux Tapestry for color and design ideas for a different project when decided I wanted to make a medieval print inspired by it. 

The ship, shield and building designs are heavily referenced from the Bayeux tapestry, as is the Latin in the ribbon underneath. The Latin is actually a few sentences from the tapestry cobbled together to make my own phrase. Since I don't really know any Latin grammar I thought it'd be a good idea to start with some already made sentences and add in my own elements. 

The Latin in the ribbon:

The original phrases I used were : HIC HAROLD MARE NAVIGAVIT (Here Harold sailed by sea) and UBI HAROLD SACRAMENTUM FECIT WILLELMO DUCI (Where Harold made an oath to Duke William). In another part of the tapestry I found the word for 'Knights' (plural was key!) and 'The Messenger', and I found 'Stars' online. I've relied on the Wiki translation of the tapestry, so I hope it's right!

The final lines I settled on were: 

HIC MILITES MARE NAVIGAVIT
(Here knights sailed by sea),
UBI NUNTIUS SACRAMENTUM FECIT ASTRA
(Where the messenger made an oath to stars). 

I was sketching and figuring out the phrase at the same time so I landed on 'The Messenger' through the research and then sketched the scroll in her hands afterwards. From the beginning I wanted to add a ship design from the tapestry so I hunted down the Latin above the ships in the tapestry and then pieced together a phrase that would make the ship important somehow. 

In the end the meaning is 'here is the place from/to which the knights sailed' and 'on the banks is where the messenger made an oath to the stars.' So, are the knights good? Or were they raiders of her land, now leaving? Who is this messenger for and who sent her? Did she herself decide to be the messenger? Maybe her message is the story of what happened to her kingdom when the knights arrived or her hopes for their voyage beyond her kingdom? Maybe she's relaying it to the heavens or the universe or to whoever she thinks can give her what she desires? Her oath might be a vow of revenge against the knights or a vow of her ever loving devotion in exchange for the knights' safe return. 

The mystery of the phrase is what I love about it! 

But most of all I wanted the Latin to be at least almost correct so I labored over checking this phrase online, which I'm still not convinced I have right. I also tried to imitate the punctuation, or what I believe to be punctuation, in the two and three dots at the beginning and end of sentences and at the end of each word. I also imitated the font, making sure I had the E, T and U/V's right. Funny thing about the U and V is there was no distinction between the two in classical times! From my understanding they just had to figure out the letter in context, like the difference between NUNTIUS (NVNTIVS) and NAVIGAVIT.

One last note- I added the birds and mythical creatures surrounding her because this was also a time of great superstition and fear of the unknown. I just had to add a few scary demons and ancient standing stones to lock in her belief that this oath to the stars would work. 

Sketch and Line:

Here's a bit of the process from sketch to final line. I like to sketch the entire piece out on one layer, erasing in and out of it as if it were traditional. These drawings are all done in photoshop on a Wacom Cintiq using a tweaked Kyle webster pencil brush. 

Then I lower the opacity of the first layer, usually coloring that layer blue but this time decided black was fine (it's easier to see during 'inking' usually), then draw the final line/ink on a layer above. I still didn't really know what I was going to do in the decorative space between circling the print. 

I decided in the end to use that space for the buildings I love in the Bayeux Tapestry and decided to close the woman's eyes to add some weight to her seriousness. 

Color:

After this I begin to fill in all the shapes with color (called color flatting) so I can reference them while doing my final Riso color. I've been trying to actually flat with the color I intend to print so I can reference it when I'm changing my opacities for Riso (more on that soon). It also helps eliminate the extra step of choosing color post flatting. Usually I flat with crazy colors and then choose my palette afterwards, but this time I tweaked the palette as I went because I felt like this was a more natural approach. The flatting with crazy color approach is what I learned to do in comics when I have to ask someone to help me flat the colors, but it's so much harder for me to come up with a palette when I'm staring at crazy color flats. In previous prints I showed the crazy color flatting and I don't think I'll do that for Riso anymore! 

One key part of coloring for Riso is making sure the color flats touch. This is called 'trapping' and is key if you have line art and want to make sure your lines will be filled all the way when printing. Sometimes if your print is a little off-registered, or if there's lazy coloring, you'll be able to see the negative space between shapes. To make sure that doesn't happen I color with all my line art at 50% opacity or less. like this:

Here's my piece fully colored with colored blue lines:

Once my colors are generally where I want them I'll make my Riso color groups filled with four opacity layers: 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%, like this:

Ok, actually this one became more complicated than 4 color opacities but this is generally how my files look. sometimes I add another layer for a gradient, sometimes I want a middle opacity, and sometimes I want a layer just for values, like this screenshot: 

And that's actually my final color! Note I make each layer set to multiply so I can generally see what colors the combination of color values will make. 

Below is a screenshot of how I finalize the image for print. I duplicate my Riso layers into their own group and name it BW for black and white, then I go through each layer and adjust the hue/saturation and lightness, turning them all the way down. I want to keep my original color group in case I need to reference it while printing!

My final file & my original sketch:

Printing:

The images below are the greyscale files I sent to the Riso for each color. First is blue, then pink then yellow.

The Riso reads the positive space, makes a screen just like a screen print, and then it's wrapped around a cylinder/drum and ink is pressed through the screen and onto the paper. 

The printing process for this was easier than most. I feel like I’m getting a better hang of the values and spotting what percentages need adjusting before printing. I printed my first pass and felt like it was too dull and needed more contrast. 

I pumped up all the values and added more pink in several parts, but then the print came out too pink and too dark. 

So I noted what I needed to change, pulled all the opacities back again, desaturated the pink and yellow and settled on this. A bit more toned down but still ultra vibrant. 

Here are the three prints all together:

I had some issues with roller marks, as usual, especially because this is a densely coated print. I choose to print the blue and pink in the first pass and then feed it back around to print the yellow. I know this is probably the least efficient for preventing roller marks (the most efficient would be printing yellow first, then feeding it back in for the blue and pink) but it means I get the best registration. I can control the pink and blue/first two colors together much easier than I can registering an almost invisible yellow layer with the two. Plus if I print the yellow first then my print would be much more yellow in the end. The first color you print sets the tone for the whole print. 

And that's pretty much it, folks! I hope you enjoy this Bayeux Tapestry inspired print!! 

Xoxo
Natalie