Monday 23 January 2012

Screens for Hit & Run

The first batch of the year, this time for Gilles Peterson's bash at Koko where the Hit & Run crew will be doing their printing on any of your clothing that they can hold down under a screen. I have been preparing their screens for over a year now and it is always interesting to see what they are up to, busier in the summer with lots of festivals but stuff going on all the time.

Friday 6 January 2012

Very Little Helper

Rather late in getting this blogged but here it is anyway. The story is JBoy made this image around the time Banksy's Weapon of Choice image was 'leaked' and were quickly told to forget about selling it, not sure if it was Fox or POW/Pest Control's lawyers or both but anyway..So the sneaky blighters offered it as a free download (for a limited time) in many colourways and the first fifty people to get it printed and sent back would have it signed for a few quid and cash donated to a dog charity. Over the next six months JBoy got regular emails from people asking how they could get a copy, so he decided to print it properly and offer it to those who had emailed. In steps Atom Printing.. very slightly daunted by the size(70x70cm) and edition (130) and also varnish which I had not done before..off we went. I was ably assisted by Ashton who used to be a street urchin but is now a proper human, he has a degree from St Martins actually and a pair of very sharp eyes. The only real difficulty we had was the varnish on white paper, any tiny speck of dust shows up like the bollocks on a dog, so we were armed with his keen eyes and a couple of scalpel blades hooking out any bits of crap that landed, the varnish closed up afterwards so it worked well even if it was a little slow.


























New Digital Printer

A little while ago I upgraded the digital printer to one that will print A1. It also takes roll paper and will print on acetate so I can now prepare screen positives in house which is a big plus. The rolls are 610mm wide so I can now print that width by up to almost anything, well 12M in theory... for those interested it is an Epson 7890 which takes 9 UltraChrome K3 inks and features the new Vivid Magenta. I got it from Chau Digital on Roseberry Ave who were very helpful indeed. They didn't have a display one so I had never seen that model before it was delivered. The packing case was the size of a small car and it took two of us much sweating and swearing to manoeuvre the actual machine in through the basement window. When I read the set up instructions I was informed.'do not attempt to lift with less than four people.' I think I would agree with that. Below are two A2 prints I did recently for Dale Edwin Murray who has been using me quite a bit, and he is very particular about his prints!


Glow in the Dark

I have got behind with my posting recently and it looks like I had a quiet end to 2011 which was not how it happened at all. I had three really nice commissions from JBoy, Mistah and Nick Smith. Starting here with Nicks, these were printed in four different colourways one of which was gold, then a phosphorescent ink and then black.  (Two things you cant do with digital.) No picture of them glowing in the dark I am afraid but they really do! I think Nick was giving the majority of these to Art Republic in Brighton.

Thursday 5 January 2012

New Screenbed

You may or may not know, but the wonderful screenbed that I had been using was rented from Jealous Gallery in Crouch End. It was perfect, big enough but not too big, and had a nice action if I may be a bit rock and roll with guitar speak. I had had it since I think Feb last year, so it was a bit of a shock when Matthew rang and apologetically asked for it back. Fair dos, they gave me plenty of warning. So I hit Ebay frantically and within a few days one turned up in Sheffield. I chatted to the vendor on the phone for a few minutes before I realised I knew him from Print Club, and he was coming back down to London at Christmas, so I bung in a few more squids for transport and I'm sorted, except I haven't actually seen it. Martin delivered as promised and I had a happy time trying to put it together. It looked really good, size perfect, fitted all my frames with a couple of cms to spare, and a serious mothersucker of a vacuum pump. I reckoned the printing surface could do with replacing, it was as Martin described, no complaints, but I had the time and the inclination...
The top pic shows the original surface with lots of masking tape.. then I ripped if off and you can see the inside with the core to support the surface but allow the air to flow from above into the pump, I had no idea it would look like this... And finally some of the 4,332 holes I had to drill in a piece of perspex for the new surface.