Another High on Fire Process

[exxxlonghair]

Taking inspiration from the recent amazing process threads - particularly the super killer Perkins HOF thread, the Ryan/Horkey debacle of sweetness, and the long awaited return of GunSho- I decided to add a small token of appreciation for this type of thread. Process pics have always been one of my favorite parts of this board. They never fail to impress me and I always seem to learn something new. The Black Prismacolor pencil shit from the Perkins thread was an eye opener. I was also laughing about how he gets in the mood by listening to the particular artist he is working on, I do the same shit.

I start out by rough sketching full size 20" x 25" on frosted mylar. Frosted mylar has it's pros and cons.
Pros- you can erase as much as you want, you can see through it easily if you need to trace or redraw anything, and most importantly it's great for inking. It has a tooth so it really holds the ink and keeps it dark opaque black, also you can erase your ink if you fuck up by using a q-tip and some isopropol alcohol.
Cons- if you are planning on scanning you need to make sure it's really clean. It's not as easy to get a good scan as with bristol board because it has a greyish cast.
For this print I decided to draw to full scale so there was no scanning involved.


Inking up the key image using a combo of Brushes, oil based paint pens, and rapidograph pens. Space at bottom is left for show info.


Shot of studio area. The big machine on the right is a vinyl plotter. I used this to cut out the lettering on the bottom of the print so I didn't have to hand draw it. I then adhered the vinyl directly to the mylar. Incidentally the lettering on the bottom of this print is the part I am least happy with. I normally like to hand draw all my lettering and usually like posters that are hand lettered. I guess I was just afraid that it would get too crazy and be unreadable.


Lettering the top, more inking. You can see how the mylar gets kind of dirty from all the use. I use a dry paintbrush to sweep away eraser shit, and usually have my drawing hand on some paper towel or newsprint. Another good thing about the frosted mylar is that if you spill a beer on your drawing it's not completely ruined. A blowdryer is a good thing to have nearby to quickly dry inked areas.








Mostly finished key image


Cutting rubylith for the light blue




Combo of ruby and ink for the metallic silver. I used ink for the beard and hair part because I wanted it to look real scratchy and cutting that in ruby would have been a nightmare.




Transparent blue grey. the text at the bottom is printed out on a laserprinter,doubled and just taped in place.


Printing the first color. Definitely jamming Snakes for the Divine during this. I recently saw a thread about how fast you print and I was kind of keeping track. I was pulling on average about 3 to 4 a minute- double pulls to really make the red pop. It took about 35 to 40 minutes to print 130 on this color. Drying rack makes a huge difference.


The wooden thing on the back of the screen is this cheap device I built to prop my squeegee against in between prints. I think I got the idea from a pic of Gary Houston's studio. It works awesome and my squeegee never falls in the ink anymore.


First 3 colors


Trans BlueGrey


Screen for Key image. I forgot to degrease and had an unacceptable number of pinholes. In the end it didn't matter because I printed with a different screen anyway.


I originally planned on the key image being a dark burgundy color. After printing one- I stared at it for about 30 minutes with my ink drying in the screen. Something about the color just didn't sit well so I finally said fuck it and went with the good old standard black. I took this opportunity to put everything on the light table and circled areas where super tight registration could be a problem. Then I went back into the key image and took care of those areas.


Final print- just needs the top trimmed. I'm glad I went with the black but I'll always wonder about the burgundy.

[Brad]

awesome poster. the high on fire letting is great.

[andydiesel]

its about fucking time artists started doing process threads. As a printer and a non artist i love seeing what goes on before it gets to the print stage.

this is great, thanks!

[perkins]

Right on, that's awesome. It's fascinating seeing how other people get to the end result. Definitely the black over the burgundy, IMO.

[vastagh]

looks excellent. thx for sharing.

[El Roacho]

fucking rad! definitely like the black alot more! makes that blue look alot colder.

[MrBlonde7]

Awesome. Thxx for process thread too.

[patoakes]

This is amazing! Love these artist process threads! More pleez.

[Sean Schock 006]

I love this! im going to start doing process pictures on my blog from now on! great work man!

[mikeage]

great photos for the step by step. thanks for doing it.
black was definitely the right call.