The Moth Queen Riso Print Breakdown from November (Patreon)

As promised here's the breakdown for The Moth Queen print from November! Below is my digital mock-up. The final came out quite a bit different from what I was expecting but I was completely thrilled by how much more gold it ended up looking.

This piece was really tough because I wasn't sure how the fluorescent orange would react with the blue and yellow. It's even harder to mock-up the fluorescent orange digitally because the color comes out so light when it's actually printed. 

I'm so comfortable with how fluorescent pink, blue and yellow will layer together that the fluo orange really threw me for a loop. I'm glad I tested this color palette on this piece though because I'm starting to use these colors more and more and want to feel more confident with these more muted tones. I love the browns and greens the fluo orange makes with the blue and yellow. They're so 'juicy' and vibrant and the colors made me think of antique book covers...so that's where I started for inspiration for this piece!

I really wanted to match that old 'gold-green' look of these antique books. I especially love the 'Beasts of the Field' book and the simple design of the 'What Was Said In The Woods' cover. I tried to start with a general decorative shape like these old book covers. 

Arthur Rackham used a muted gold-green palette regularly as well, here's one of my favorites from him. I decided I wanted to create an Arthur Rackham inspired forest scene, something like a princess-fairy illustration...but darker in tone. 

I always start with a little chicken scratch idea of what I want. I imagined an elegant, fairy-tale like figure gliding through the center of the image, walking towards the viewer through droopy branches and foliage. 

Once I was happy with the basic idea, I started on a tighter sketch, blocking in that oval border I loved so much in the book covers.

Then I dove into the line art!

I blocked in the colors and decided to leave the Moth Queen's little veil/shall empty, to really contrast the heaviness of the ink with the crisp white of the paper. 

And below are the color breakdowns! I always make each ink on it's own group layer in photoshop and then add layers of different opacities to each group with all layers set to multiply. 

Above is what my typical file looks like. I've turned the orange layer off and am highlighted on a '60%' layer- set to 60% opacity- inside of my blue group. 

After blocking in the shapes of color/flatting the whole print I decided to try some added watercolor texture to see if I could make the colors look older or more worn. I used a Kyle Webster watercolor brush in photoshop for this texture. You can see it a bit better in the images below. 

Afterwards I change each layer to '-100% lightness' in the hue and saturation adjustment so I can preserve my values for the Riso, since it only reads information in positive and negative space! So below is what I'm actually sending to the machine. 

I print each image on a separate screen or 'drum' and then run them all together to create the full print.

Here are some examples of what that looks like, with a silly upside-down yellow on blue that I think looks really cool. 

And here's the final again! When I first printed it I thought it was too light, so I darkened it, hated it, and then went with my first edition again! Looking back, I think I really wanted this piece to be a color and texture experiment so going forward I'm thinking of adding more of this watercolor texture in prints to make that Riso texture even more interesting. Wish I could show you how vibrant that fluorescent orange actually is, it photographs so poorly!! Oh well, happy many of you have it in the flesh now too. 

Patrons who signed up last before November 1st should have already received this print. Next breakdown is Totoro and then my print I'm making now for January's print and Giant Robot's Year of the Rabbit show!