Scenic Route: New Screen Prints by Kevin Mercer, Friday Nov 5

[largemammal]

Hey folks, I'm having a one dude show at Masthead in Philly on November 5.
It will be almost all art prints, and most of them are brand new. I have a lot of printing to do before then, so I'll be posting some process pics here leading up to the show.

First, some details:
Scenic Route: New Screen Prints by Kevin Mercer
Reception: Friday, November 5 6-10pm

Masthead Print Studio
340 Brown St.
Second Floor
Philadelphia PA 19123

Masthead Print Studio

Largemammal: Website | Facebook | Twitter
I'll be setting up a special site for sales during and after the show. More on that soon.

Here are some images:





Thanks for checking it out, I hope to see one or three of you there.

[largemammal]

I finished printing the last piece for the show last night. Here's some process info.

I made this print in the spring then decided that I wanted to rework it and develop the idea.



I started with a pencil sketch:



Scanning the sketch and fooling around in Photoshop wasn't working, so redrew the whole thing in Illustrator. That made it way easier to edit the shapes, but now I had this super sharp vector design that still needed something.

[JustinHelton]

NICE! Always love your stuff Kevin!

[largemammal]

I've been fascinated by this huge sign near my house for years.



I tried once or twice making an art print of just the sign, but it wasn't working. So I figured I'd draw up a horse and put it on top of the design. Like so:



So here we are, finished vector design. Still too sharp for my taste, but overall looking pretty cool:

[largemammal]

Apropos to the name of this show, I decided that the only way to soften this design properly was to redraw the whole thing by hand. So I printed it out and went to town on the light table. Smokey approves:



That led to about three hours of piecing the design back together in photoshop, filling in some blanks, and then hand trapping it.

One of the ways I trap stuff like this by hand is isolate each color on a layer in print order. Then I select the layer, expand the selection by 6 or 8 pixels, and draw in the traps where the layer above overlaps. It was easy with this one since the shapes were so simple.

I know, long way around, but the results are worth it.

[largemammal]

and, the printing, starting with color 2.



3:


4:


5:


6:


and the final color:


"The Road Home", 7 color, 18x24, edition of 35

[j]

I will not be there but it looks awesome.

[ryan_1969]

very cool. love all of it.

[THE PiNCH]

very nice

[largemammal]

Hey folks, I just wanted to mention that there is a closing reception for my show at Masthead, tomorrow night from 6-9pm. Again, thanks for those who have already come out, and if you're in the area I'd love to see you there tomorrow.

Scenic Route: New screen prints by Kevin Mercer
Closing Reception: Saturday, November 20 6-9pm

Masthead Print Studio
340 Brown St.
Second Floor
Philadelphia PA 19123

The gallery is kind of tough to locate, look for a sandwich board outside the door near the corner of 4th and Brown, across the street from Honey's Sit n Eat.

Thanks!