Good October all! Milwaukee filmmaker Sean Kafer debuted his film Valley Maker this week in his own city at the Milwaukee Film Festival.
From Milwaukee Film’s Summary, “Few people dare to travel the Mississippi River on a homemade wooden raft anymore, but filmmaker Sean Kafer wanted to experience the mighty waterway as pioneers did. Join him as he travels the currents from Prescott, Wisconsin, to New Orleans, crafting living postcards from stunning photographs as he visits forgotten nooks, majestic valleys and the lovely but troubled Louisiana delta. Part documentary and part travelogue, this meditative journey punctuated with gorgeous cinematography showcases the healing power of nature.”
I had the opportunity and privilege to take his imagery and create a screen printed poster for the festival. This post is dedicated to that process and the awesome folks involved in its production. Every print starts with a drawing. In this case, a possibly familiar Verithin Poppy Red drawing. (Images in order of discussion) Later it will be fleshed out (the scan of the Poppy Red) to become my 1st imprinted screen. Second layer of graphite bringing in the regimented specifics of the drawing detailing the key elements. This scan will become the dark / 2nd imprint. Scanned. Now to clean up some lines, straighten a few things out, remove unnecessary elements (red from the second image). Thank you Photoshop for your immense set of tools to then convert them to halftones for the printer
What color paper you ask? Tangy Orange from (French Paper Co.) is the end all intended design consideration. Let’s move the text down here, offset the white layer, block in the Milwaukee Film Fest and pop the color of the director to a sharp, contrasting white. There. Lets see what this looks like. Looking pretty good. Adjust some color choices. Instead of pure white, lets throw some 20% yellow in there for a cream. Green? Blue? Grey? How about a Turquiose!? Yes. Get rid of anything extra and verify all I need. Run it by my peers and see what their take on it is. Let’s ship it to the Printers. I used our local sustainable Orchard Street Press who also participated by creating a great Serge Gainsbourg image for the biopic from the fest. So I wait. And shortly thereafter they’re done. Final products are amazing, the event itself was spectacular and the movie premiere sold out. I wasn’t able to get my ticket in time. The film festival edition was 25 prints sold at the kick off opening party event with all of the proceeds going to support the event and filmmakers involved.
Shortly thereafter, a small limited artist edition was released on the Digital Snowshop in the small quantity of 10 of which I got one for myself!
Send me some love, I’d care to hear what you think of the process/illustration.
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