King of Crabs- Process:The making of a Screenprint Nakatomi, Inc

Screenprinting!

Hey, how cool is this:

How did it get there? Well…read on-

Legendary life-enthusiast, W.A. Brenner from The Austin Chronicle was going to do an article on Screen Printing in Austin. I had been knocking around an idea for a follow up to the “Sea Also Rises: The 14th St Station Squid,” and the Chron needed a cover…so we decided to get together and make babies. The above image was the first Idea I had, but it would’ve required the Chronicle to publish a sideways cover, which I didn’t know if it would be do-able or not. So I came up w/ the next idea-

This cover concept is oriented w/the regular layout of the Austin Chronicle. BUT- art director Jason Stout said do the 1st one! Which is cool, as I got more outta that layout anyway.

BW preview- The Sea Also Rises: Incident 6- The King of Crabs Claims His Throne by you.

So, I sat my ass down for a few days and drew this out by hand. Blueline first, then pencils, and then inks. My butt actually started to hurt this took so long. I decided to throw in the ‘camino cats’ from my other upcoming print running away from the Crab.

Now comes the color! The fun thing is that the grey makes it look like I got a TON of colors on this thing, each overlay creating a shade of the color underneath. But in actuality, it’s just 5 screens.

Aaah. AAAh… almost done. Sheesh. The finishing up takes way longer than I thought, as I added detail to every little thing. What the heck is wrong w/ me!!!

The Sea Also Rises- Incident 6: The King of Crabs Claims his Throne by you.

All done. This is the file that the Chronicle can print from. Now…to do the separations so I can screenprint it (Or more accurately, so Clint Wilson can screen print it w/ my oversight, while I hog all the credit)! I do create the image w/ separations as I go, but there’s a bit of polish and stuff to add. Making sure the trapping works, etc.

1st layer down, blue

And now the yellow- you’ll see how the yellow and blue make green…just like my pee. The yellow goes under the red on the next pass to make the crab a warmer yellow. The red on it’s own is going to actually be pretty cool (for a red)

3rd layer- some half-toning in the red makes the yellow pop through- the red reacts w/ the blue to make that muddy purple in the buildings. I like how the dog fur is looking there in the bottom right…kinda painterly.

The grey adds a TON of depth to it all. Between the overlays and the halftoning it multiplies the colors like crazy. This is done by adding a LITTLE BIT of black ink into transparent base, making it very, very transparent.

And the Black line locks it all up!

Now all that had to be done for the screen print was ALL THE ACTUAL SCREENPRINTING. As I’m expecting a child next month AND I’m working on a comic book due at the end of the year WHILE ALSO running Nakatomi, I’ve been having Master-Printer Clint Wilson do more and more of my printing for me. He’s got years of experience doing this professionally and wields a mean squeegie. He assisted for the Squid print, and since he had to mix all the colors for that one (and this one is essentially the same palette) he was ready to roll.