Process thread: New art print

[boatdreams]

In honor of this new section made especially for process documentation, here is some process documentation.
A few weeks ago, I did some sketches of businessmen catching lightning bugs. I liked the inherent humor and relative commentary in the idea. I ended up reworking the composition several times until I finally drew and inked a complete drawing (which I revised by cutting and taping).
Here's the original line art, reformatted and taped together:


I enlarged them on a black and white photocopier and pieced together two 11x17s to make the keyline film. I also enlarged some xeroxed brushwork to overlap and combine with the bottom half of the image.

I touched the film up with opaque film pens and by removing some of the toner (scratch board style) with an X-Acto. Most of my seps are cut from rubylith, but I was also using a good amount of photocopied brushwork for a lot of my colors with this print.

First color:


Lining up the second color by taping the film down.


Second color is another split fountain. Transparent green / white (for stars):


Third color, another split:


Then I go back to the light table to figure out what I'm going to do between here and printing the key line. Here's me splicing and taping rubylith and scraps of xeroxed films together for one of the subsequent colors.


Fourth and fifth colors in place (sorry for the bad photo):


I decided to do my keyline slightly transparent so that it would kind of mesh with the texture and depth I achieved with all that scratch board and ink work (rather than just cover it up). Here's color number six. I've still got at least one more to go.


Tomorrow I'm going to print what I hope will be the last color, which is some yellow-green for the lightning bugs' lighting mechanisms. I'll post a (better quality) picture when I finish it.

[taliban]

glow in the dark

[windflame]

Great great great work man. I love seeing all of the different ways we work.

Thanks

[eyepeace]

removing some of the toner (scratch board style) with an X-Acto.

I love that.
This is great. Thanks for sharing.

[boatdreams]

Eyepeace -- I can't take credit for that move. I lifted it from Mr. Jay Ryan.

[boatdreams]

Okay, they're finished!
Erin -- I definitely debated doing the lightning bugs with glow in the dark, but I wanted something that was going to be visible in the light, as well. I decided to try straight process yellow (knowing it's somewhat transparent) and see what happened. Here's screen seven up close and a shot of the finished print.





Thanks for looking, everyone.

[Robopocalypse]

Thanks for sharing your process, I love seeing how others work.

[Grzeca]

Good stuff dude

[boatdreams]

Now in the classifieds!

[g for giant]

Great work man, I really like the combination of colors you used.