Sketch to Print: Turning a Journal Sketch into a Finished Silk-screened Print

Left: the final French Bull Dog print is 5.5 x 6.5 inches. Print Gocco screen print on Folio paper, green and navy inks. I left the deckle edge on as many cards as I could when I cut down the paper. See the deckle at the base of this card. The wording on the print is from the fortune cookie fortune that was stuck to the journal page where I did the sketch. I tried out other options, but this seemed too perfect. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

MCBA recently sent out an art call—None of the Above. I wanted to participate and started planning something about the State Fair and birds, of course. But I was caught up in my fake journal and didn’t get right to it. Then I was working on my dog portrait series and did a preliminary sketch of a French Bull Dog that I quite liked. (See a scan of the original journal page in my post on Superstition #6, here.)

In an instant things changed. I decided that I would make a print of that sketch instead. And here, step, by step, is how I turned that journal sketch into a print.

But first, for people who aren’t familiar with the Print Gocco, you need to know it is now defunct. That’s right the manufacturer in Japan pulled the plug. But there are other products coming up on the market that will probably do the same thing, and you can always do conventional screen prints. Still, the Print Gocco was a lovely device and one loved by people in the book arts. (In Japan it was considered a children’s toy and market saturation was very high indeed!) The cool thing about the Print Gocco was that you could expose your art and print it with little muss or fuss. All you needed was a toner copy of your line work. You placed it in the small printing machine which is about 6 x 12 inches, shut it, attached a holder with two flash bulbs and pushed down. Presto, your screen was exposed and ready to be inked up. Then you put it back in the same device and used it to print, simply by opening and closing the machine on each new sheet of paper you put in.

Last fall I was told to give up hope that someone would revive this product. I decided that I would start using up the remains of my supplies. There won’t be any more bulbs or screens or ink. Might as well do something fun with them. And so it seems a perfect thing, when a mail art-like call comes from MCBA to get out the Print Gocco, beloved also by mail artists over the years.

Above: Beginning with the original sketch in my journal (A) I traced the image onto acetate (B) adding back the ears which French Bull Dogs are known for, but which were cropped off on my sketch because of page limitations. It isn’t clear (no pun intended) that this full sketch is on acetate. The white sheet behind it is so that you can see the lines. If you look at the bottom of the sketch you'll see an opacity over the green background where the light from above bounced back from the acetate. (C) is the final printout from the computer after I worked the sketch digitally. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

So how did I get that sketch out of my journal, into the computer, and onto a screen for printing? First I put a sheet of clear acetate over the journal page spread and simply held it in place. I traced my original sketch with a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, which is what I had used in the first place. I wanted to keep the line quality “brushy” with thin and thick lines. (If my sketch had been on a flat piece of paper I could have just put it on my drawing tablet and traced it digitally to get it into the computer—but we are talking about getting journal sketches into the computer and sometimes you just have to deal with that gutter!)

I was surprised that the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen ink never dried on the acetate. Some inks don’t, so I shouldn’t have been that surprised, but I was. I needed to scan the acetate sketch so I could work on a digital file. In order to do this and not get ink everywhere I placed the acetate FACE UP on my scanner (acetate is thankfully clear) and then I put a clean large white sheet of paper over the top of the acetate to keep the ink off the scanner top when I closed it.

I then scanned the acetate sketch, brought it into Photoshop, FLIPPED horizontally it to its original orientation, and saved it. I played around with it a bit as a bitmap, enlarging and reducing it in my layout in QuarkXpress, where I had added the type.

I didn’t like the bitmapped effect on the line quality (it was too jagged, though I like what happens when I do this with pencil sketches). So I placed the image in Illustrator and used the auto trace feature to turn the lines into vector art. The advantage to this is that when you enlarge and reduce vector art the lines all stay smooth. Some of the roughness of the brush line was smoothed out in the transition but you can play around with that a lot (a LOT!). I did play for a little while until I got something that would work well. (Keep in mind that the silkscreen printing process is going to change your line quality anyway so unless you’re making digital prints you really don’t have to spend hours trying to get your line quality just so. By that I mean, know when to move past experimentation.)

I saved the Illustrator file as an eps and placed it in my Quark layout. I reduced it and cropped it to the position I wanted. I fiddled some more with the type. I wanted type that would be readable and hold the ink from the printing process well, so I spent some time playing with sizes and adjusting kerning a bit so things would “clog.”

Then I printed out the final layout which would become my print master. That’s item C in the photo above.

Next I used the Print Gocco to expose this toner copy (I had printed it out on a laser printer—you need toner in the Print Gocco process because the heat of the flash bulbs burns the carbon in the toner to make it attach to the screen and create the holes through which the ink will flow and print).

By this time it was rather late at night and I wasn’t going to print so I spent time cutting down the cards I was going to print on. I cut down 10 sheets of Folio Antique (which has a creamy off white color). I left the deckle edge when I could. I ended up with 150 pieces. (I needed 125 for the MCBA art exchange, but I always plan on extras.)

Left: I experimented with the idea of printing something in the background of the piece by cutting a mask (right) and using a rubberstamp of a block texture that appears over the type and BEHIND the ear. You really need to click on the image to view an enlargement in order to see the light purple ink on the left dog.

See the image at the left. I played around with additional ideas for the background of this piece. Since I was making 150 pieces and that would mean an additional 150 “operations” I decided to just keep it simple. I would not be adding texture to the background.

The idea of simplicity was also why I decided to print two colors in one impression. With the Print Gocco the ink is very viscous and stays where you put it on the screen—mostly. If it does migrate it doesn’t blend into another color of ink, but it pushes the other ink aside. Because I wanted the type to be one color and everything else to be a second color I just needed to put the type ink color over that area of the screen. However, I also wanted to minimize migration so I put up little foam blockers everywhere, to hold the ink near its appointed areas. This cuts down on the amount of ink that you need to use also, a good thing, because when my ink supply is gone, I’m done!

Once the foam blockers were in place I inked up the screen and inserted it into the machine and started to print. You can get a lot of prints with one inking, but there were a couple times I had to stop and reink certain areas. Also the foam got saturated and I did get some migration in the later prints. Some people, myself included, find that charming.

(If you want to take your journal image and make a print but don't have a Print Gocco, you'll need to check out the various books on screen printing. Don't be scared. It's not a difficult process. You can do it! All the steps up to the point of creating the master are similar to what you would do, with some additional steps needed too.)

Right: When I finished printing 4 prints I would carry them on a sheet of paper and place them on the floor as far back in the studio as I could, gradually working my way out of the studio to the table I was working on.  (I don’t have a print rack. I did this even when the girls were alive and it was no problem—they just sighed and went to take a nap in another room.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I did the front side printing on Monday night and left the ink to dry. Tuesday morning I made a revised credit and title line master on the computer, printed it out, and made a screen. I was originally going to have it print at the top back, but the position of the front image made this not as desirable (I didn't want any of the printing on the back to show through into the main image on the front), hence the change to have the credit run down the side on the back. Front side margins were wider so the possibility of show-through was minimized if I printed the back text running down one side.

The back side printing was a one ink printing and it was very quickly done.

Left: Here are the backs of the prints with the credit line. I didn’t have to put them all over the floor. It was easy to stack them and not smear the 2 lines of type. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

By Tuesday night the prints were dry and in one stack. They are waiting for me now to sign and number. I'll sign them in pencil at the base of the print along with the print number and the edition number of 150 (I actually got a full count). I think I’ll do that tonight while I watch a little TV. Then all I have to do is deliver them to MCBA along with the postage fee. I can’t wait to see what I get back in the mail.

Why don’t you send something in? Go through your journal and find a sketch you can use to create a stand alone piece of art. Maybe you’ll make a linoleum block print based on a sketch? (Go see my five-part series on making Eraser Carvings which starts here, if you want some help with that.) Maybe you’ll make a digital collage? Maybe, like me, you have a Print Gocco and a little bit of ink, some bulbs and a screen? What a great project for a Print Gocco swan song!

Right: One last image, because I couldn’t resist. What is it with me and little dogs right now? I just can’t get enough of them—looking at them, watching them, sketching them. Could I live with one? I don’t think so. What would Emma and Dottie think? Still, for a few brief hours I had dozens of devoted eyes staring at me. Click on the image for an enlargement.

Comments

[Jon Harl]

I went looking on the web for this cool little silkscreen kit and here's what i found.

http://www.northwoodstudios.us/index.html

Looks cool and I like the results.

[Velma]

Roz--this is a great guided practice piece. I've just skimmed it--I'm off to work in a flash, but nice--I'll revisit. I love the fortune. And of course the dog as carrier.

[Julie Oakley]

Such a shame about the Print Gocco - I would have loved to have owned such a small-domestic-house-friendly printing system. Anyway it looks as if you did them proud with your swan song.

[Roz]

Jon, the url you sent gets me to a page that is mostly Gocco stuff and I wouldn't recommend anyone buy any Gocco stuff (can't get a machine there as they are sold out) because it's a dead item. But I did some searching there and found
http://www.northwoodstudios.us/what_is_yudu.html

And that's what I think you must have meant and were trying to send us to.

That's the device, which I couldn't remember the name of, that someone spoke to me last month about as a replacement for Gocco.

I haven't seen one in person yet.

One thing I read about it elsewhere is that you don't need toner copies to make your screens, you can use inkjet, which since so many folks have those now instead of toner devices it makes sense, and makes it easier for folks.

It is a little more labor intensive than the Gocco, but it does seem, on reading about it, that it will be less "messy" than regular silkscreen printing.

Thanks for reminding me of the name Jon, there is a martial arts practice with a similar name and I can never remember which is which.

[Roz]

Julie, thanks, I have a few more screens, and will be making more in the dog/fortune series!