Cities and Signs

I'm calling this one Continuous Cities. Four-colour screenprint, 2011.

The image size is about 10 by 13", the paper size is 15 by 22". The title is, of course, yet another reference to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. (My fave!) I am pretty damn happy with how it turned out. I think it helped that I gave myself plenty of time to think about the colours I used - colour is not my strong suit, so I wanted to take some care and try to follow through with exactly the feel I wanted for the piece.



I nicked some paint sample cards from the hardware store to give me an idea of the colour scheme I wanted. In case anyone is curious, what we have here is Mellow Bouquet, Raven's Rage and Faded Jeans.


Then I worked up some samples using the screenprinting inks, which can be a bit tricky to work with. Producing some small amounts gave me an idea of the colours and ratios I needed to use, before I produced the larger amounts I'd need to print with - otherwise I might bugger it up and waste a lot of ink. Colour-mixing is not a strength of mine; I tend to get impatient, add too much of a colour and end up with some unpleasant vomity brown. Or pink. I hate pink, I always accidentally end up with pink.


Here is the print with the three block colours all done, missing only the final key colour with the line work. I actually rather liked it just like this. If I had more of the Arches 88 printmaking paper I was working on, I may have left a couple unfinished like this. Instead I took a picture.

The registration was a little tricky, but I'd given myself some minute leeway with the lines and block colours where they overlapped, so working from light colours to dark it all lined up pretty well.


Another one with just the dark red, grey and gold-yellow. A little dark.

Oh, so I didn't include a key colour- for the lines and details of the buildings - in my original colour scheme. I was going to be lazy and just use black, but that wouldn't have worked. Instead I used a dark grey which used the blue grey above as a base. I kept it pretty warm so it would go with the red/grey/gold.


And here is the final product again. I think it looks a little better in real life, since this scan turned out a bit drab. The colours really pop, which I feel like is a nice property of screenprints.