Birds

The birds for the poster were drawn seperatly and then scanned to be digitally edited together so that the birds proportions to each other could be easily adjusted. After it was printed off some further adjustments were made by cutting areas out and sticking them back down in different placements.

Using a pen and tracing paper the birds were traced over so that the design is re-drawn neatly. A litho printer will transfer ink only where the given image is present, so unlike most home printers it will not fill negative space and instead leave the paper in that area blank. This is why tracing paper is used so that the printer can easily tell the differentce between negative and positive spaces which can be useful for using less ink (if mass printing) but also to create contrast in texture/light reflection between the paper and ink similar to lino printing.

The litho printer can only print in one colour at a time, this means that to have muiltiple colours more than one design sheet is needed (or the first one can be moved around). To fill the birds with a block colour thier basic shape is cut out of paper and stuck onto a new sheet of tracing paper.

Here the two sheets are layered together to give an idea of what the final result may look like.

During the process the printer needs to be told how much ink to use, too little ink and the design may not be transfered properly and be too faint.

Testing for the desired level of ink is done on scrape paper (preferably similar to the paper being used for the final outputs).

Too much ink and the design will blotch.

The right level of ink is found by trail and error.

Because the orientation of placing the deign into the litho printer is not the same as the output of new prints I had placed the second design the wrong way resulting in the designs to be misaligned.

I made the overall design simple because I had planned to make as many as possible.

The posters were then taped to walls and pillars in common walk ways with the tape reading "Free Poster" to invite people to take them. I stuck them on at an angle using cheap masking tape to be more inviting for people to take them as it would make it clearer to the veiwer that the original owner no longer wanted these posters as indicated by the lack of care putting them up.

Different combination of paper and ink level as well as misalignment create many variations of the same design.