July’s Risograph Print ~ Campfire Stories (Patreon)

Hi everyone, I just finished July’s Risograph print and will be sending it out first thing next week! I just printed the blue, which has to sit for a few days, then on Friday I’ll print the pink and on Monday I’ll print the yellow so the pink has time to set into the paper as well. Each layer requires a few days drying time so there’s minimal roller mark issues. Each time I print a color the roller marks pick up ink from previous passes so I have to be careful and print with this in mind. Here’s an example of what just the pink and blue look like together~

When I first printed the blue and pink together I thought maybe it should only be a blue and pink print, I was so happy with it! But then I added the yellow and it made the print so much more dynamic and colorful that I scrapped that idea quickly. Sometimes this is how I decide on edits in the final- I mourn the pink and blue pass! Yellow really gets the works because it’s at the end, usually. For this print I actually changed the density of how dark I wanted the yellow printed. Usually I print all of my colors at the darkest density that the machine will print, but the yellow was just a little too overpowering so I printed it at the lightest density, which fixed a lot of my sudden frustration in adding in the yellow.

I didn’t do much editing on the final color, I ended up really liking the first draft after I printed the colors all together! Usually I go back to my file and do lots of edits but I really enjoyed this one right out of the machine, which is rare! But I did do one more pass of the three colors with some slight edits after marking up my first draft with notes on what values to change and where to add and take away color. The edits were minor, though! I was being extra fussy.

Each time I test I do about 30 prints so I can really see how much the registration will change print to print, plus that way I’ll get about ~15 perfect prints. I’m doing runs of about 400 now, which means only about 200-250 are perfectly registered, and my patrons get the cream of the crop!

I ended up working a lot on the character building in this piece, playing with shapes I found while loosely sketching and sometimes going with the spontaneous shapes of my sketch. This one ended up being really complicated to color, though, because of how much I had going on in it. I took the coloring one step at a time, trying to play off each character’s values and colors with their neighbors and background. After the first pass I added more details in the line art and slightly tweaked some values to balance the piece better, but I only changed the blue layer and decided not to touch the pink and yellow because I was satisfied with how they came out. Blue tends to be the most dominant in my pieces since the line art is blue and the blue helps make nice neutrals in the final colors, which I’ve been more keen on lately to make more dynamic coloring choices.

I think the little guy with the beret just listening in is my favorite, maybe just beating the goblin with the moonshine jar haha. I think that goblin might be me…I also have a striped jumpsuit that’s getting frayed at the bottom.

Can’t wait to have all of these printed and signed for you! If you have moved since July please update your mailing info and keep a lookout for this print next week! I’ve got August’s print sketched out so I hope to have that one soon for you too! Thank you for your patience as I get caught up, these prints always take me longer than I expect but I’m at about two a month so september’s print should be coming late September! Thank you!

-Natalie