Das ist ein Test

Update on the "tryout" book, here are the pages I printed this evening:

On the bottom you can see the first page of the book, I named it "TESTING!", because of my favourite scene from "The Simpsons".

I guess I'm going to finsh printing the pages tomorrow and then I'll try and bind the books by myself, without the help of the workshopmanager, on Saturday and/or Sunday (I hope I won't mess everything up!) after printing the paper for the book covers. I aIso ordered transparent elastic band to bind the books, so the stitching won't disturb the pictures on the double pages, I hope it'll work.

Uhm...I forgot.

I didn't really do any drawings lately and I still didn't get on with my zombie chapter, because I started printing another book.
It's been a very long time since I last bound a hardcover book, so I'm completely out of practise. I don't even fully understand the notes I wrote down to remember each stept of the bookbinding process anymore.
So I thought I could make some tryout/practising books, but since I did all these sketch/notebooks (for which I actually have no use and I think I'll give most of them away) lately, I didn't want them to have blank pages.
That's why I was working all day long to prepare a content for these books yesterday. They will contain most of the digital drawings I posted on this blog, which is a lot. Every book will have 48 pages an some of them are going to be multicoloured (some of the graphics will have 3 colours, like blue+red+black). The colours I'm using are: gold, red, blue, yellow and black and the size of the books will be about 21 x 14,8 cm.
I guess I will be occupied with printing the pages for the rest of this week (even tough I'm provided with 4 screens this time!), because I'm planning to print the paper for the bookcover, too.
So hopefully I can start binding the books next week, when the workshop manager is back, so she can help me understand the notes I took some years ago. :D

Endlich...

I finished printing the second chapter of my book! Yay.
Now my feet are killing me, because I was standing and working in the studio for 7 hours nonstop. x_x

Here are some crappy photos of what I did:

I'm going to lie down now...maybe I'll go on drawing the next chapter tomorrow.

Marmelade im Schuh, Aprikose in der Hose und ein Arschtritt dazu

Now I finally started printing the "cephalopods" chapter of my book! Here's the proof:

I didn't finish printing the red layers today, because there were too many other peolpe working in the studio, so at some point I wasn't able to concentrate anymore due to all the fuss.
That's why I then went to my studio, where it's quiet and I worked a bit more on my brains:

Plus I made this:

 I did only a single print of this...it's a birthday present for myself. :D

Ich bin fertig gebacken

I couldn't start printing today, because there were other people working in the studio when I went there. :\ ...Okay I admit, I went there pretty late, because I was outside, riding my bike in the burning heat this noon. Sometimes I really do take little breaks from working. :D
[So I'm going to get on with my book this weekend. I hope no one else will be working there then!]
But then I made the following new sketch/notbeooks this afternoon. I used some of my misprints for the booklets covers. I thought it would be a pity to just throw those pictures away.
On the photos you can see the back and front of each booklet (They're all about 20x25 cm or 18 x13 cm, or something in between. I didn't memorize their exact measurements.):

1. 

I put red paper on the inside of this ones cover.

 (The others are white on the inside)

 2.

 3.

 4.

Plus I came up with an idea for another picture for the zombie chapter of my book. But today I only did a rough sketch of it:

 

All these little side projects, like the notebooks and the brain sculptures, are distracting me from working intensely on my book. And today I had a new idea for making a multicoloured print from a rasterized photography of mine...

Right now I'd like to work on everything, all at the same time!

Sticker & B-Movies auf die Backe

I've bee screen printing stickers today! I had this sticker paper lying around for about 8 years and didn't know what to do with it, plus I had these digital drawings, I did just for fun and didn't know what to do with them either...so that's how I came up with that idea

I did one set using metallic "gold" paint (Though you can't see that on the photo. Trust me it actually glitters a bit.) + black + varnish.
The one with the skull and the flowers is the largest, about 20 x 11cm.
  
[Klick for full view!]

Plus one set with red and black paint (+ varnish):

The one with the sewn hand is about 15,5 x 7 cm. 

Now I printed 5 of each sticker, but I already gave one hand sticker to the workshop manager of the printing studio, because she liked it so much. She said, she'd actually like to get it tattooed, but she didn't know on which body part to place it, so I suggested her cheek. :]

[These stickers are not available in my shop, because it costs me money to post items there. But you can e-mail me if you want one for 3€.]

After I was done with those stickers, I finally prepared my screens for printing the second chapter of my book. I'm provided with 3 screens, so I think the prints will be done quicker than usual. Yay.

I didn't get on with the zombie chapter though. I was too exhausted from all the work at the studio duringthe past days, so when I came home, I rather lay in bed and watched a bunch of horror b-movies, instead of doing drawings. But today I did drawings of what I watched.
 Here's the list:

Brain Damage: pretty funny, though I didn't like the ending.

Driller Killer: I didn't like this one, it's about a lot of fucked up people and bad music. But the killing scenes were still funny.

The Wizard of Gore (1970): it's bad...just bad...soooo bad. I'm certain the people who made this were doing drugs, A LOT of drugs. 

I also watched "Grizzly" (1976), but I was too lazy to draw a grizzly. The movie was quite fun to watch, especially the ending with that explosion. :D

More crappy photos of stuff

Sooo I've been working all weekend to make this:

I did eight prints of it, but only three turned out good (the print on the photo isn't one of them). I'm pissed, because I put so much effort into them, for what feels like almost nothing. :\ 
The problem is that I have to cut these large sheets of paper (lenght is 120cm) by hand, so the size of each sheet is differing a bit from the others. This means, while printing the layers of paint are differing, too, so in the end they're not congruent with each other.
Unfortunately I can't solve this problem, because I can't buy straight cut sheets of paper this large anywhere.

Anyway...I also got on with my brains! And up to now they're fun to make. :) 

Next week I'm going to start printing the scond chapter of my book, I only have to print out the model images so I can get started.

Blubb

Tomorrow I'm going to print my latest zombie! I already prepared the paper for it yesterday, it's going to be about 59,5 x 120 cm big. And today I worked 5 hours only to piece the model images together. x_x
Plus I got on with the brain box sculptures. I think I can start painting them very soon. :)

But I still didn't prepare the model images for the second chapter of my book (I'd like to finish that zombie print first).  

None the less I now I started drawing the third chapter, which is going to be "zombies" . :D

Blink

Now I finally did one last drawing for the second chapter of my book, though I didn't put the pictures into order yet. But I prepared my latest zombie for printing out the model images.
Plus I worked a little more on the brain box sculptures. One of them got eyes!

The others still have to wait for theirs, because the papier mâché isn't dry yet.


In the meantime I also made more note/sketchbooks from scarp paper, which I found in the printing studio. Here are some:

Darlin' you got to let me know

Since I still can't come up with the last picture for the second chapter of my book, I did this [It was a lot of fun to draw and I'd like to do a big screen print of it as well.]:

Crappy photos of work in progress

Here's what I've been doing lately...

First I finished one more linocut for my artbook side projec:

(The paper is 21x29,7 cm.)

Here's a close-up, so you can see how nice and sludgy the paint looks:

I also found some affordable spray varnish, to make the paint water-resistant.
When I was done with that, I started cutting the next plate, for the brain box picture:

In addition to that I began to try and make a sculpture based on it. 
I'm a little excited about it, because it's my second attempt to make a sculpture, after I quitted the one with the giant eyeball (I just didn't manage to make it look like I wanted it). Because I didn't want to have troubles finding the right degree of naturalism with the eyeballs again, I ordered some plastic doll eyes from China (I just couldn't find any shop which sells them over here, so I had to wait almost two weeks, until they arrived at my home):

Plus I bought three different kinds of springs, because I didn't know how they would work out. 
I actually still want to make at least one sculpture of my brain box, that really works like a Jack-in-the-Box. Though I already know that one of the springs is too hard for this purpose (the one on the right), so I'm setting my hopes on the other ones.
This is what the sculptures are looking like right now:

 

The white stuff, which is going to become the brains, is cotton wool soked in glue, mixed with water. I only made the base and it still has to dry until I can get on with modelling the brains.
After I'm done with them, I still have to make three boxes. But unfortunately the wood-workshop at my uni is closed until August, so I'm thinking of making boxes from cardboard. Though I don't think I can make the Jack-in-the-Box work, if the material from which the box is made is too soft, to keep its top closed and the spring contracted inside of it.
We'll see!

Meow

Right now I'm working on the 8th drawing for the second chapter of my book. I'd actually like to finish the wohle chapter this evening (though I still don't have any idea for the 9th picture), so I can prepare the image sequence and the model images for the printing process. 
But I guess I won't get that far today. So I'll have to wait until the end of next week to get started with printing the chapter, because, unfortunately for me, there's some kind of workshop taking place in the printing studio from Monday to Thursday. :\

But I don't want you to get bored, so here's another picture from the first "dead birds" chapter:

Yawn

One more picture to draw plus one more new idea until I can start printing the second chapter!
(But I'm having the feeling, that I might have to rework this one a little. Though right now I'm too tired to spot the flaw which bothers me about it. x_x)
 

Shop

Today I set up a shop where you can buy some of my stuff, you can find it 

--> HERE <--   

(...or by clicking on the link on the right side of this blog :D ).

But because I was doing research and trying to find the best site to sell things (I'm not sure I've found it) and reading a shitload of terms of use, I didn't do much else. Though I actually had two more ideas for the second chapter of my book. 
Now I'm feeling a bit pissed, because I didn't start drawing them today. >:|
But I'm definitely going to do that tomorrow. I need to get on with this thing!