| The Little Friends of Printmaking : "PACIFIC JAMMZ" |
| Have you ever wondered, "Where on earth do Tiny Showcase's printed letterpress editions come from?!?" I ask myself that question every single day! And I work here! |
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The Little Friends of Printmaking's "PACIFIC JAMMZ" concept sketch For the past twenty or so years, Tiny Showcase has been pleading with The Little Friends of Printmaking - begging them to allow us to feature their artwork. I won't bore you with the details involved in convincing an artist as awesome as these guys to create artwork for us but let's just say that if Tiny Showcase ever builds a library, it has already been named. Here's a look at the concept sketch that came our way back in early January. You can see the foundations for rad-osity beginning to be poured. I particularly love the paint-by-numbers blotches. This usually means "Note to self: Pick out Pantone colors in the near future." Most artists never get around to picking out the Pantones so we just mix a bunch of leftover paint together in one of those Annie's Veggie Pot Pie containers. Not these guys though. They are totally professional.  The rough sketch |
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The Little Friends of Printmaking's "PACIFIC JAMMZ" digital rendition and color guide Once our heads have finished spinning (a la Steve Martin in The Jerk) from looking at such an incredible image, we send the artist back an email that reads "Hell yeah!" and they continue to work on their masterpiece. Once completed, we end up with a file that looks a little something like this, which serves as a rough guide for the final print. In the case of this particular piece of artwork, letterpress artist Dan Wood takes this digital guide, along with each layer of the artwork and scrutinzes them until he goes blind trying to determine the perfect letterpress configuration. This is followed by a series of super-secret meetings in a garage on the West Side of Providence, phone calls shrouded in secrecy, and all manor of unsavory dealings.  The digital proof |
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The Little Friends of Printmaking's "PACIFIC JAMMZ" final print Aww man. We accidentally scanned a print in that has a pencil line on it??? This is what happens when you stay up for 3 nights in a row trying to coordinate a print launch. In two years, Tiny Showcase has taken 30 years off of my life. There's some sort of equation there. Anyhow, it should be noted that Dan printed this piece on white paper. All of the color you are seeing was built up brick by brick. Check out the alignment on the stop light! The colors in the actual print are much richer - for some reason JPGs have a terrible time trying to capture letterpress colors. There's also an amazing, subtle depression to each layer. Oh! And the print numbering and artist name debossment. Can't forget that.  The finished print Click for detail. |
