The Process Of Illustration: Greg Pizzoli

Illustrator: Greg Pizolli

Illustration: Nine Eyed Acid Beast

In this post I am going to show you the process I used to make this silkscreen:

I was invited to participate in a number of Halloween/Monster related art shows this year, and wanted to make something new. I had a bunch of ideas, maybe 3 prints that were each half finished before I came up with this idea. If I don’t draw something to remind myself I always forget my ideas, so I quick drew this in Googlesketch while I was reading my email. I know it looks horrible. I drew it with a mouse and it was early ok?! The concept was to do an older and non-threatening vampire: “Gramp Vamp.” It made me laugh at 7am and sometimes that’s good enough for me.

It’s about a 15 minute walk from my house to my studio and on the way I thought about this gramp vamp guy. By the time I got there I figured he was too sissified and kind of dull…it was a one-liner and I was sick of it within an half an hour of thinking it up. So I drew something else out and made it more psychedelic – still with the stumpy teeth, but scarier, like a little kid Dracula with nine eyes and bad haircut. And a detached head.

Usually I would draw lots of little thumbs like these and then blow it up on the Xerox and ink it using my light box, but I needed to get this done right away…so I just had to trust my instincts that this would work and go straight to Photoshop. Here’s my “digital desk”:

So I take about 15 minutes and do some coloring with my Wacom digital pen/tablet . At this point it’s just about figuring out the palette and deciding if this 10 second pencil sketch drawn on the back of an envelope will actually work out as an 18×24 inch screenprint. Here’s what I come up with:

Works for me! I have been doing a lot of really cute stuff lately, and this nine-eyed acid tab tonguing beast is doing me some good. I want to create new textures for this piece (I am guilty of using the same ones over and over in the past) so I move over to my “analog desk” and use a brayer and some ink to work up some new textures.

I scan everything in and place them all in the same file, which is a full size (18×24 inch) 300dpi Photoshop file. This is getting printed so it’s gotta be 300dpi. My palette is yellow, red and black and I create a new layer for each of those and label them accordingly.

I place the pencil sketch on the top layer to use as a reference, and set that layer to “multiply” so I can see the other layers through it and I lower the transparency to about 30%. I am going to redraw the whole image with the Wacom, but I use my pencil sketch as a reference.

I work on this for a good bit. I just draw it and figure it out until I think it’s done. I convert all of the textures I created before into halftones so they don’t look pixelated, and I typically watch a dumb action movie on my second monitor or I listen to This American Life on NPR.

So remember that because I will end up screenprinting this, each color is separated on to it’s own layer in Photoshop. Using my Wacom, I draw directly in Photoshop, creating each layer indvidually. Here they are one at a time:

Yellow:

Red:

Black:

And here they all are with the original pencil sketch visible:

So at this point I save each layer as it’s own pdf and get them printed at kinkos on regular copy paper.

When I get back to the studio I have this:

Now I need to coat my screens. A screen is a piece fine mesh stretched taught over a wood (or in this case aluminum) frame.

Here’s one of mine:

Notice the ghosts of all prints stained into the mesh.

I’ll take it into the darkroom and coat it with this goopy photographic emulsion using a small metal trough called a “scoop coater”.

Always wear gloves, kiddos!

After drying for an hour, the screens are ready to be burned.

To do that I place the the copy-paper separation (in this case, the one for the yellow) down on the glass of our large light table. The table is filled with ultra-violet lightbulbs that will expose the screen to uv light.

Whatever is black on the separation will block that uv light from hitting the screen and wherever the separation is white, the screen will be exposed.The exposed areas will harden into a stencil and the areas blocked by the black will stay soft. Does that makes sense? Let’s try with pictures:

1. Separation is placed between UV lights and the screen

2. Lights are turned on:

3. Areas that are black in the separation are unexposed and remain soft, areas that are white on the separation are exposed to the light and harden, creating a stencil. When the screen is washed with water the soft emulsion falls from the screen, leaving only the hardened areas, which create the stencil.

Here you can see the soft areas of the stencil about to be washed out.

A new screen has to be made for every color printed, which is why screenprinters tend to be economical in their palettes and learn to do more with less. This same process will be repeated to create the screens for the red and black layers.

Next step is to prep the screen and mix the ink. I mixed up this orangey-yellow and now I am ready print.

I lock my screen into this table top that has hinge clamps bolted to the surface. These will keep my screen in the same spot and allow me to lift it up and down when placing each sheet of paper. It’s important that the screen is locked in really well so that the registration of each successive color stays spot on.

I use a squeegee to pull ink through the screen on to each sheet of paper…and the first layer is down!

I was a little worried that the halftones wouldn’t work so well, but they printed up great. Here’s a detail:

Now I do that about 40 more times:

Once those are dry, I set up the next screen, which will be the red layer. I print the same way, making sure to line up the screen perfectly so that the registration is right.

Red printed:

After those are all printed and dry I can line up the last layer, which will be printed black.

Registering the last screen:

Before printing the “edition” copies, I print on copies of old posters to get the ink flowing through the screen. Fancy printmakers like myself call these “test prints” and sometimes they look pretty cool:

12. Final Prints

And here’s the finished print!

The last thing I do is cut them all down, sign and number them and put them up for sale on Etsy. Get one right here!

About The Illustrator

Greg Pizzoli is an illustrator, printmaker and educator from Philadelphia. He received his MFA in 2009 from the University of the Arts, where he now teaches. He keeps a studio at Space 1026 and is represented by Steven Malk of Writers House.

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