Job Done. - Cat & Goldfish

This print has been floating around my head and idea sketch book for awhile now. Seemed like a good time to draw it up and free up some head space for new ideas. Got half way through the design process and went to see Wolf of Wall Street, which went on for hours! Got back at midnight and worked til 2:30am, finished it in the morning. Into the studio at 2pm, print finished and out by 10:30pm.
 

 Layer 1 - two shades of orange at once.

 Layer two - Pink nose and tongue and the white bodies of the fish

 Fish detail

 Keep it simple stupid - testing out a two layer option (possibly for greetings cards) with aectate and the base layer. Another three layers to go

 Layer three - orange fur.

 Layer 4 - Tabby markings.

Final print. Layer 5 - Black outlines.

Here be Dragons!

I'd been thinking about doing a Dragon print throughout January but life kept getting in the way. Started off sketching out some mini insect bug dragons in the blossom which I'll come back to at some point but decided for this print my dragon needed to be a little fiercer.

 Bug Dragons

 Another of my highly skilled ideas sketches.

 Giving my dragon a little more attitude.

 Having a fail at composition. Decided to go for a crop as the body looked way too stiff and uptight.

 Started printing - first layer down

 Red eyes

 Base blue

 Highlight blue

 Final black layer

 Print variation 1

 Print variation 2

Dragon on acetate.

Final prints - home and dry after 9 hours printing.

Printing the Walrus and then up til 2 drawing pigeon mark 2.

Started again on the Walrus. Blue colour plane was a pain the arse this time round, keep misprinting don't know why, it was smooth sailing Monday on the thin paper before I started trying to put more layers down. Up late again working night before so probably just being a tired mopey weakling. Was trying to print landscape - not happening. Ended up printing from the side of the bed to get it in portrait, covered myself in blue but got them out eventually.

 Mis - printing on Scrap.

Walrus on nice bit of bird covered scrap.

Success - background and subtle colour blend on walrus body. Nicer spacing on A3 - Need to learn to give images a bit of room.

 What a muppet. Exposed my next layers backwards. There's no registering these two. Had to strip, re coat and expose my screen before I could carry on. Fail. I'm getting extremely good at wasting time and money.

 Making sure they're the right way round.

 
Walrus on white scrap. Doing two of these to see what they look like as blanks.

Left at 8:30. Ate out, back home by 11:30 and then drew pigeon until 2. Tired. (but still writing this at 12:50am, clearly havn't made the connection between exhaustion and sleep yet..)

Texture layers

 Leggy pigeon final layout and rough colours for reference when printing. Planning on doing quite a few mini colour blends on this one and hopefully fit it a few different colours on same layer - e.g feet and eyes two different pinks in one sweep. Just have to keep the squeegee nice and straight. 

Back in to studio to print final layer of the walrus and planned to make a start on the pigeon. Pigeon didn't happen. Late in, no energy, hadn't eaten anything all day and flagging. Only had a mouldy aubergine and a biscuit in the flat. The biscuit got eaten. Bought a weird mexican rice brick from a stall on way in but pretty nasty - ended up in the bin after a mouthful.

 Printed Walruses with a few minor fails.

Finished print ready to photograph.