Eliza process

of course, I forgot to take a photo of the linework. OH WELL. Eliza is a character of Bittermause who does this great webcomic: The Shufflers.

Christmas decorations: the making of!

The previous post featured these guys:

First of all, print my drawings onto some fabric! (I did them digitally in my now new favorite drawing software: Manga Studio :P). The patterned fabric is fabric some offcuts one of my other studio neighbours very kindly gave to me, Rowanjoy. The key thing is that it had GOLD in it, and as we know GOLD=XMAS ;). As for the Magikarp... Not sure how that got there! :P

First off I attached head to the body that was just black fabric...

And ten sew around it, trim excess and TURN IT OUT.

The Poppy doll was like the hardest thing I think I have ever sewn, to be precise - trying to turn it out was HAAAAARD. The arms and legs were so thin! But I made it in the end. And the second hardest thing was probably these miniature shorts ;)

..and then proceeded to do the easier bits, the castings. The backs are made of the blingy fabric too to match the doll ;)

Then they got STUFFED. One of these things is slightly different that the others... Can you tell which one? ;)

And that is it! This was probably the most exciting little project I did in December! Along with the Magikarp tote... Incidentally I think these were the only two little projects.

I wasn't going to do any New Year resolutions apart from the "get mean at banjo", but I think I should have one. This one: TAKE BETTER PHOTOS :O

Kitchen Animals

So for a short while my weekly creatures are going on hold... This is because I am just too busy with real stuff to do this kind of organized fun stuff. But dn't worry, as soon as things calm down I will be back at it :)

I have now been working on a number of new products and these are going to be tea towels (or kitchen towels, whatever you prefer to call them). They are all ordered up and I can't wait to get my hands on them! So for now here are some process pictures. These are the finished pieces:

I recently started to do my sketches on the computer:

I am quite a control freak and this gives me a lot MORE control (and takes leff time) than doing sketches on paper (although roughs and ideas I still do in my sketchbook).

So then I transfer some of the lines with a lightbox onto NICE paper. And then use the printed off sketch side by side with my drawing just for reference. Like this:

And here is the dog in the making :)

And this is my fave pen that sometimes makes a mess of your hand.

Photo Etching part two.

As I said before I was going to go back to do more photo etching and the second time round take more pictures. Although now I realise I could have still probably taken more pictures... I think this will be it for now!

First of all the plate needs to be filed and degreased. This is not as exciting so skipping that part :P Once it's ready you take it to the Dark Room, which is filled with yellow light.

Next you stick a layer of your photec - the funny blue film that looks incredibly green here - onto your plate.

Then it goes through the minipress as it has to stick down well!

Then you pop bubbles, make sure it's all good, run it through press again and cut off the excess.

Next you put positive on your plate and expose it. No pictures of exposure unit I'm afraid!

After that it goes in a special bath that develops photec and all the unexposed bits come off. A bit like when you are preparing screen for screenprinting! This is probably the reason why I love this process so much :)

You then proceed and show it to Laura who makes a funny face.

Then it's the Acid Time! I have lots of black surfaces so mine goes in for a few minutes and if it's ok I then proceed to aquatint it. And then it goes back into acid, and when it returns....

...The remaining photec and aquatint have to be removed, so it goes in yet another bath. That's the last one though! Then we're ready to print.

Inked up plate!

And the first proof!

By no means this is finished though. I want the Moon to be a bit lighter than the rest of the image, so I tried to brasso out the face of the moon - results above, you can see my face in the Moon's face! :) I will keep going at it though, hopefully in 2 weeks time you will see the proper finished print though! (prints need to sit in a drying area for like a week...)

This is it for now. So here, have a picture of Katt Monsen: