The Midnight Tree - July's Riso Subscription Print & Riso Breakdown! (Patreon)

I'm shipping these out this week! If you're subscribed to the print subscription tier and your address has recently changed please let me know asap! These prints are for anyone who paid on July 1st- thanks!

This print is a three color print in blue, fluorescent pink and yellow and inspired by the color of the apron, flag/banner and cloth from some of the Makers series prints (in the photo below)! Size is 8 1/2 x 11" with a nice heavy weighted bottom, like a polaroid picture.

A print made for the color!

I love those dark values next to the vibrant pinks! I wanted to make a piece that really showed off this combination of colors and I finally pulled the trigger on this piece! The texture of these three colors combined is also so gorgeous and a big reason why I hyper fixated on it. This combination features the best of Riso texture that the machine creates (a dither-dot texture to push the ink through the screen without clogs) and the texture that the rice paper screen creates, which looks like a more organic paper texture, best seen in 100% values of ink. As soon as I knew what color I wanted to focus on I started right away on the sketch for this eerie and magical piece.

Sketching and building the piece!

This one started pretty close to the final because I knew I wanted to make a dark tree scene to really show off that dark Riso ink color- and decided to add little ghost creatures to the tree with no ink for contrast. 

Below is the line art progression- I started with the ghosts I knew I wanted to draw, and then drew the line in the tree and added all the others once the interior line was finished! 

Coloring

I knew I wanted the colors from the Makers series so I matched the values from those previous pieces for this one! It was a 100% pink overall, 50% yellow and 70% + 90% for the different blues. I actually printed it first with 50% + 75% blue opacities at first and didn't like them and wanted to make them even darker so this is how I ended up with 70 + 90. 

My photoshop mock up ended up being a bit darker than how the print actually came out, but that's the game I sign up for with Riso! Usually why I look at some previous values first before hinging everything on a color. I'm actually making a color mock-up test sheet for studio use and will send it in August's riso subscription package! Sometimes they aren't 1-1 but it's a good starting place for general values. Everything hinges on Riso make and model, density of the ink, humidity in the air and paper texture/weight. Pretty nuts! That's Riso for ya. Editing is a big part of my process!

Attached is a big(ger) image of exactly how I break down my Riso files in photoshop with all the values! Please let me know if you have any questions!!!

xx nat