Silkscreen

     Silkscreen printing, or serigraphy, is an artistic process that involves printing an image using stencils.  Paint is usually either squeegeed on or rolled across the stencil and reaches the image material only through the mesh (made of anything from human hair to silk to polyester to nylon or stainless steel mesh) within the gaps of the stencil.  It was of course first used in Asian countries like China and Japan to use with block printing and hand painting to yield different effects and was later introduced in Europe where it was popular as a way to make expensive wallpaper and to print on fine linens and silks.  They even created photo reactive stencils using originally toxic bicharmates—though the chemicals used today are much less dangerous.  With this photo emulsion technique, you can get a very detailed image based off a photograph.  Nowadays, screen printing designs on t-shirts is very popular. 

      As for the stencil itself, it can be made of a lot of different things and doesn’t even have to be a separate object from the mesh.  It can be something cut out and placed over the mesh or the screen can be blocked off with a non-permeable material that prevents the paint from getting through and sometimes this material can be removed so the screen can be reused.

        One of the best things about screen printing is that it is so versatile it can be used for many things, especially in the commercial industry, like with electronics, fabric prints, billboards, sports equipment graphics, and many other things.  

Silkscreen artists:

Roy Lichtenstein:

Some of the best and most famous expressions of silkscreen art were the pop art created by Roy Lichtenstein.  In fact a couple of his prints are often hanging up somewhere in the school here.  His work is a very clean-edged, comic-book style that focused on a unique sort of parody type humor.  Comic books are often printed with a serigraphic technique.

 

Doug West:

Doug West is an artist that creates beautiful serigraphs based on the great skies and environment of the Southwest.  His images to me seem to capture the simple yet beautiful aspects of nature and the technique of serigraphy.

Charles Fazzino:

Another artist dealing in pop art serigraphs, his art is famous for its 3 dimensionality and fun style.  He’s featured mostly cities and Broadway landscapes, as well as characters from Disney and Batman and comic-book type characters of his own making.  

 

Green Thumb

Just in case anyone wonders, this isn't about jumping on the environmentalist go green bandwagon.  I hate politics.  I just like drawing plants and hands and moons and stuff that looks like fantasy :)  The GT stands for green thumb, rather inspired by a book I read once, but I can't remember the title. 

Woodblock Printing

Woodblock printing is a technique for relief printing, otherwise known as “xylography”, that actually originated in places like China and other areas of Asia and in Egypt (although the stamping technique had been around for a while and in other places).  It started out as a way to print on textiles and other surfaces but now is also used as prints on paper as it spread to places like Europe and beyond.  It is a beautiful craft with many different varieties and qualities, depending on the artist, their origin and time of work. 

The basic idea of woodblock printing is to cut out the design from a block of wood using a knife, chisel, or sandpaper to remove the parts of the wood that will be white.  It is preferable to cut with the grain of the wood and it is one technique that is difficult to fix once an error is made (although with digital mediums that shouldn’t be a problem).  It is often monochromatic (as that is easiest when printing) but can also be in multiple colors if more than one woodblock is carved and printed on top of the previous print.  New colors can even be created by overlapping the prints.  The printing can be done a few different ways, like with simple stamping the block onto paper or textiles, rubbing (used mostly in Asia) the paper or cloth as it sits on the block, or in later times with a printing press.

Anna Pulvermakher is one of the artists that uses mostly the stamp technique.  Her art looks a little rough sometimes, but I think she has a unique and beautiful style in many of her works, especially the monochromatic ones.

Vicki Bailey also uses the stamp technique and with a bit more complexity and detail.  The bird especially is well designed in my opinion.

It is said that the greatest height and quality woodblock art came from artists of the Edo period in Japan where the culture encouraged much contemplation, study, and precision.  Many western woodcuts are beautiful though somewhat rough looking  while these prints from that era (and still many from this one) are so carefully made they’re hardly recognizable as having been printed out of a wooden medium, and most are full color.  The most famous of these are done in the Ukiyo-e type technique, which involved a master artist and many assistants and involved the master making a master drawing which was pasted to different woodblocks and each block had the planned white carved out to leave a relief block for each color.  Sometimes a color block would be printed more than once to achieve the right depth of color and fine quality. 

Toshi Yoshida, born in Tokyo in the 1920’s is one of the more modern Japanese artists that keeps alive much of the the Ukiyo-e technique.  He’s traveled to many other places too, and his work is absolutely stunning.  He specializes in the naturalistic style though for a long time he changed to an abstract, nonrepresentational one before changing back again.  

And here it is...

I always make things so much more complicated than they have to be, but here's my latest digital illustration drawing:

There isn't really a specific written story to go with this, but the basic idea is a couple kids followed a talking rat and found a door to a really interesting place.  Rather cliche, but the object wasn't to be original.  It was just what I wanted to draw.  Some improvements may need to be made, but I'm not sure how to go about them yet.

Cell Shading/Animation

Cel Animation

Cel animation is a traditional 2-dimentional process of animation or artwork where characters and moving objects are drawn on cels (clear sheets of celluloid or more common cellulose acetate) and placed over a still painted background.  The Characters are traditionally outlined with black ink by hand (or more recently, xerographed on) and then colored in (traditionally with acrylic paint or in modern times digitally or with an animation photo transfer process).  The traditional paint-on color was done on the reverse side of the cell to prevent the brush strokes from being visible.  It was commonly used by Disney, Universal Pictures, and other 2-D animation studios in the beginning, in classics such as Peter Pan.

 

and though most of the traditional media and slow work has now been abandoned for the faster, more efficient digital medium, the idea of the technique itself is still used today in films like the Princess and the Frog, just with the more modern method combined with the original hand drawings.

This is a diagram of how it was done traditionally:

The APT process

(Animation Photo Transfer) process, used in films like the Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective, is a process that involves photographically transferring  the lines and color blocks onto the acetate sheets (cels) using a certain UV sensitive ink.  This process first made it possible to make the lines color instead of black, though you can do that with xerographing the image now as well. 

The traditional technique is also still commonly used in things like Japanese animation.

 

If the pictures don't show up, sorry.  My technical skills are still in progress.

Mechanical Dragonfly

A dragonfly technical illustration.

Technical Illustration

From what I have learned while researching technical illustration, technical illustration is basically a means of visually explaining to a non-technically educated audience the specific form, proportions, components, and uses of an object, usually something mechanical or detailed.  It’s used in many areas, but mostly in the field of technology as blueprints and diagrams or in the medical and scholastic field.  It is used often for mechanical engineering and invention for practical, military, or artistic use.  It stresses accuracy and detail for the entire form, sometimes even the parts that are not facing the viewer.

The tools used in technical drawings vary widely, often depending upon the era in which they were drawn.  They can be drawn simply, with no more than a pencil and paper, or with the more important and finished products the major tools can be used.  The drafting board has been around for a while.  This board involves the large sheet of paper set at 90% angles on a large board where a sliding strait-edge T-Square can be used to control the pencil or pen being used to create accurate measurements.  It also holds set squares and triangles in place for diagonal drawing, etc.  Nowadays drafting tables have drafting machines supported on both sides of the tables so that lines are guaranteed to be parallel—though mostly even they have been largely replaced by CAD (computer aided design) Workstations.  Drafting table tools include compasses for drawing circles and arcs, the French Curve for more complex curves, and Splines that can be manually bent for different curves.  They also use templates and other things.  As for the computer technology they use now, the 2-dimentional types are basically mechanical drawing systems where shapes and curves can be created by software and drawings are much easier to edit—with a drafting table, if a mistake is made, that’s it and you have to start over.  The three dimensional programs make the technical illustrations much more comprehensive and complete, in a way, because the illustration can be turned about and examined on all sides.  There’s less room for error for these and so in the modern world everything like planes and car designs are checked in 3-D before they’re released in 2-D format for manufacture.

From looking at some of these illustrations, I’ve been able to see there are a few specific similarities in how most technical illustration is carried out.  First of all, the object represented is usually drawn with very precise, clean lines that convey every important detail.  If it’s drawn on paper the lines may necessarily be a little rougher but almost anything drawn with a computer with be completely pristine and clear.  The way in which these things are drawn involve all parts as seen all the way through, as if it were transparent.  The back parts are visible, though the lines that indicate them are either lighter or dotted or dashed.  Less important lines are also lighter.  The lines in the forefront, as well as the general outlines of the object, are thicker and darker to give the object perspective.  Perspective is very important in technical drawings along with the realism and accuracy of proportion.

Examples of technical illustration:

Hatch Illustration:  http://www.hatchillustration.com/Vector.html

These people (or person) do mostly mechanical illustrations for cars, bicycles, parts, and other machinery—and in a couple instances riding clothing and helmets.

Leonardo Da Vinci: http://www.drawingsofleonardo.org/

He was one of the first technical illustrators to become famous.  He designed machines and invented many things advanced for his time and revealed the complexity of the human body.

Nidus Corp: technical illustration: http://www.nidus-corp.com/Tonp.html

They do everything-from shoes to car parts to faucets.