Water Colour Seps - Suggestions/Tips?

[S.Blake]

Hey hey...

We need to simulate a water colour painting for screen printing. The amount of colours does not matter... I assume we will need a whack of them to get the colours correct. Any tips from all you hot shots? RTG? Anyone!?

What about printing? Andy's? Tips?

Thanks in advance!

Monster Press.

Samples:
thetourshow.com: ben tour illustration ... work, news, gallery, store, contact
thetourshow.com: ben tour illustration ... work, news, gallery, store, contact

[RichieGoodtimes]

On what? Paper or a shirt?

Way easy on a shirt. Not as easy on paper.

[S.Blake]

Oh, sorry sorry.. this is on heavy stock paper!

[S.Blake]

On shirts I would do a simulated process or indexing... but the artist wants it to look like his water colour painting.. so its got to be spot colours I'm guessing.

Juxtapoz did this one for him, 8 colours, and he loved how it turned out. So now it's our job to make him look good!



Who prints the Juxtapoz posters? anyone on here?

[RichieGoodtimes]

The seps are easy-ish. Build it up with layers of trans greys. The variable is figuring out exactly what ink mix corresponds to the grey value on the computer.

[Andymac]

if its all greys, posterize them to get however many diff shade layers you want. they should be solid, not halftones.

Mix some black, then mix transparent and/or white with it to match your lightest gray to find how much ratio.
work backwards from that to step the diff greys towards black and get separation from each grey to the next.
You can tint as needed if you need to add some colour.
You want to test print your greys and let them dry to detemine final shade/darkness, they will not match what you have in the can.

I think that might work

[HYNES]

Printtime used to do a lot of juxtapoz posters till they went under, its possible a co. called Supreme is doing some of them now.

i've done a couple of different prints basing out greys though not as many as 8 screens, i've had best results working backwards - darkest to lightest, i found doing it this way blends the shades a little better (lightening the darkest a step each time) so you end up with a slightly more uniform look and a less posterised finish, more in keeping with a watercolour look.

[RichieGoodtimes]

It all depends on the art, but sometimes I'll print dark to light for a couple colors then overlay that light to dark to soften the mid tones. All based out. Impossible to preview on a monitor, though...and a bitch to set up and proof, but excellent results.

[squeegeethree]

We do a lot of this stuff. We start by doing the watercolor though. Scan and seperate into spot trans colors.

[HYNES]

It all depends on the art, but sometimes I'll print dark to light for a couple colors then overlay that light to dark to soften the mid tones. All based out. Impossible to preview on a monitor, though...and a bitch to set up and proof, but excellent results.

right - also looking at this image again, the heaviest of the dark greys sit at the bottom of the image and become less heavy moving up the page - you could also throw a subtle blend into some of your screens which will also help with the softening of the midtones and add to 'faking' the watercolour look.