The Unicorn Knight ~ May's Riso Subscription Print (Patreon)

Hi Everyone, May's Risograph piece is finally printed, with June's print coming close behind! I should be printing June's piece this weekend, if I can squeeze in between other printers. Ink for my new Riso still hasn't arrived, I'm getting sort of a work around by my supplier, but hoping I can print at home soon, just won't be this month, I guess.

Anyway, I'm so happy with how this unicorn piece turned out, I wanted a really striking fluorescent pink print that was really magical and playful and I think this final hit all those desires. The surrounding colors were really difficult to decide on this one but I think keeping with a playful and bright color palette was the best way to go. I used a lot of gradients in this piece and really loved the way the bottom of the Knight's pants came out in contrast with the bright unicorn color. Her pants almost look like they're glowing. I also added a yellow gradient in the horse's hooves, as well as a faint yellow gradient to the bottom of the cloud, which I feel also makes it glow. The green in the hill from the Oath piece I did for March was inspiration for the Knight's cloak and the gradient in the grass below the unicorn. I feel like I've been drawn to that red/green contrast lately, maybe the next print I'll try beefing that up significantly. The inspiration for this piece was mostly classic book plate art, like Edmund Dulac, Walter Crane and Arthur Rackham!

Here's a HUGE write up of my step by step. I hope it's helpful! 

-First I like to draw about 20 layers of warm up sketches and shape ideas of what I want this piece to generally look like. 

-I copy and paste from several layers or continue working on a single sketch layer, scrapping the others.

-Work on sketch layer, carving out scratchy lines with my eraser tool to find the ‘correct’ lines. Use one color for main focus, maybe other colors for details and another color for general background shapes. Leave some room to figure things out in the line, basically so I’m not bored. That means basically stopping prematurely when not all the details are as clear as they could be to start the line art. 

-new layer, lower opacity of sketch layer, work on the ‘ink’ layer on top of it like a light table. 

-draw the general line, starting with whatever piece feels most satisfying to start on. Some people specifically start on the hard parts…I think I generally just dive in to the main subject so I can draw the attachment lines for all the side details around it. The main subject should be the easiest to draw the line of because the sketch should mostly work it all out for you. But the small details are left for the end. 

-I tend to erase and redraw a lot during the inking. I think this gives me lines that feel loose and exciting. Don’t be afraid to kill your precious lines. If they’re not working erase the entire thing (without the behind sketch layer) and redraw it so it feels right in the space and connects well with the other lines.

-after doing most of the line I like to turn off all sketch layers below it and just think about what needs to be added. Maybe take away details that seem to busy. I reassess. 

-Then I’m on to the color flatting. This phase is just dropping in any ridiculous color so I can reference those shapes while coloring in the final Riso layers (more on that soon). I make sure most of my lines are closed or close any broken lines with color before using the select the space (using the magic wand tool with contiguous and sample all layers turned ON). 

-Then I use an expand(by 3+~ pixels)>fill action to fill in the color flats. This is a process I learned from comics flatting! 100% recommend creating an action to color your digital work, it takes half the time it usually took me to color prior to this action. I also pair this action with a hotkey (my favorite is F6). Basically I’m selecting the shape in between my lines, using the action by hitting F6, deselecting and then selecting a different shape. You can also add ‘deselect selection’ to the end of your action, but I prefer to deselect because it comes in handy for color changes.

-During this color phase I’m usually just focusing on blocking in those shapes, but it’s helpful for me to choose the colors I want generally for those pieces too so I don’t have to guess later in the Riso color process. I knew I wanted the unicorn to be pink, so I color flatted the unicorn shape as RGB pink.

-I also like to color flat with the line layer opacity turned down to about 75%. This way I can make sure I’m hitting all the little details that my color flatting action might miss. I want to make sure there are no large white lines behind the line work or else it will cause ‘trapping’ issues later when I’m printing. Riso naturally misregisters so if there is a slight misregistration I don’t want one white line to be visible between the shapes of color. 

-With all of my color shapes/flats on their own layer I make my real Riso color layers. 

-Make one group with one layer inside set to multiply. Copy this layer 3 more times inside the group. Change each layer’s opacity, with one at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. Collapse the group and copy that group as many times as you have colors/inks. In my case, I usually only use Blue, Pink and Yellow, so I copy the group 3 times and name them for their respective color.

-Then I choose the RGB/HEX color that correlates to the ink color. 

-I magic wand tool the shape that I want to color from the color flat layer, which is turned off. I’m literally selecting the flat layer, selecting the shape from the main image (with only contiguous turned on this time, NOT select all layers), and then filling the shape with the RGB ink color using the paint bucket tool onto the special opacity layer (like the 25% layer) within a specific ink group. For example, I want the horse to be 100% opacity pink and 25% opacity yellow. I select the horse shape from the color flatting layer. I go to the 100% pink layer in the Pink group. I paint bucket fill with a pink color (the only pink color I’ll use for the whole piece). Then I’ll go to the yellow 25% opacity layer in the yellow group and fill the still selected horse shape with a yellow that I choose (which will be the only yellow color picked for the entire piece). Because these layers are on multiply you should be able to see a nice mock-up of the color you’ve chosen. 

-After doing the color for the whole piece I start adding a variety of opacity layers in-between the 4 main layers. Sometimes they’re gradient layers, sometimes they’re white layers that I want effecting only the pink layers. Sometimes I’ll add white layers at the top, above all the groups, so I can lower the value of all three ink groups at once, but usually I try to do that inside the inks. I want to make it as simple as possible for me to change while printing later, if I really have to change the values (which usually I do have to do some tweaking). 

-I add any more line details to the line layer (which I’ve made the ink color that I want to print in, I like to print line art in blue so I change it to blue). 

-I sign my name, clean up anything that looks funny and add some highlights with a white layer above all three ink groups. 

-I collect all the layers from this whole file and tuck them in a group. I name this group color and then duplicate it. I name the duplicate BW for black and white. I want to make sure I keep my original colors for just in case situations. 

-Then I set everything up for print in this layer. I have an action for this too! I have a hue/saturation>lightness -100 action. I basically go through each layer playing this action with a hot key (I set mine to cmnd Q because I hate the quit photoshop hotkey). 

-Each layer now has the exact values of the color version I was working on! The BW group can now be tweaked during printing without fear of losing my original values. 

-then I’m off to the printer!!!

TLDR:

-sketch a lot

-compile all sketch layers to make a new finished sketch.

-Ink on top of low opacity sketch layer. 

-ink without sketch layer to see what needs to be added or simplified.

-color flat on a single layer. Maybe use the flats as a color guide.

-make 3 groups for three different inks, add multiply layers with different opacities inside of each group. 

-pick shapes from flat layer, fill them with ink color paint bucket into the appropriate opacity layers. 

-Add random opacity layers and gradients and white layers for adjusted values.

-add more line details and line texture.

-collect all layers into a single group. Duplicate, have one for color and one for black and white. 

-change each color layer to -100 lightness in hue/saturation adjustment. 

-ready for print!