Or, this is what happens when a band gives me six weeks to make a poster. It gets complicated. The print involves three different printing methods including four-color web (newspaper) press, three silkscreen colors, and one woodcut relief color using commercial letterpress ink.
The newspaper version went up around town since it’s thin/temporary enough to be pasted, and souvenir versions went on heavier poster paper and brown drawing paper. I’ve wanted to print on newspaper for a while, but getting the poster to read clearly against a high-contrast background like the front page of the Washington Post would be tricky. Enter letterpress ink.
The text layer is cut from 3/8″ flat balsa wood. I transferred the image from a xerox sheet using a technique where wintergreen oil is dabbed onto the backwards-reading page, and the ink from the xerox is transferred to the wood block. I cleaned up the smudgy result with colored pencil and cut away the unlinked areas with an x-acto blade. Used red letterpress ink with a small amount of white added for opacity. Then pressed the paper against the inked-up wood block with a dry ink brayer and my fingers, for good measure.
Apart from being good folks, The Riverbreaks are damn good musicians. They bring the rock. Check em out on the 15th if you’re in town.
