printing some special stuff for special people :D

After finishing the final project, I now have 2 more weeks of doing nothing, heh. So I decided to make some special notebooks for the people that I cherish most :).
I will make a total of 4 different notebook designs which will be Kanji, of course - as that will be my personal touch cause everyone knows I'm crazy about it :P.
They will be made manually as a linocut and will demand lot of concentration and a fair amount of time.

I did one today, so you can see how it looks like :D

 freshly-printed kanji for "Love" on 5 different colors

 the linocut itself

and 5 beautiful A4 notebooks, exclusively for my friends :D

5.8.2012. EVS PAX final project COMPLETED!!

After cca 1 month and 10 days, I have finally competed my EVS final project. With this done, there is nothing more for me to do - this was the ultimate challenge of my service here in Estonia.
Here are all the 5 posters together, my pride and joy :)

The PAX series of posters:

1. Panda, anti-racism

2. Diversity

3. Kanji 4 elements

4. Dove, peace

5. Chuck Norris, equality

The idea of the fifth and final poster took me a week to materialize and only 2 days to put together and print...but nothing could have gone without complications, of course :)
For this poster I wanted to make the text in dark teal color (the one between green and blue) and I think I made it right :)

 This linocut is the only one I couldn't make, so I needed help from a professional - Kalju.

The reason for that is simply cause this time it's a portrait and as I don't know anything about making portraits, I didn't know which lines I should leave and which not.

 Chuck Norris, the linoleum version :P

 This time I have used the only font of metal letters we have in the museum, all the other fonts are made explicitly of wood. All set for first print.

 This time, the letters were surprisingly even, so the only horribly uneven thing was the cliche!

 Teal color - maybe you can't really see cause of the light, but it actually is :)

 Setting for the first poster in color

 and voila! - the first colored poster (ignore the cross, that's just sunlight :P)

 and all 5 Chuck Norrises :P, final 5 of the final poster

 + me

These are all the cliches I used during my final project. 6 of them made by me - the panda, 4 kanjis and the dove. The others are the 2 official EU logos made by lasercut in Tallinn and the Chuck Norris portrait made by Kalju.

So, now afer I did my job, I can concentrate on my own business and appear in the museum from time to time :). The only things left to do related to my EVS are to write the YouthPass certificate and buy the tickets to home :D.

That's it for now! Cheers!!

still developing the idea for poster No. 5

So, I do have an idea, but I'm not sure if it's possible to the linocut I want...I'll see that later today or tomorrow, when I catch Kalju/Ahto :)
Until then, I have nothing to until I take care of that cause the text depends on the cliche, of course :)

Poster No. 4 COMPLETE! Final project almost clear! :D

Here it is...very simple 4th poster. Finally managed to keep my promise of simplicity :P

 all set for printing the 4th poster

 the first (ugly) b/w result

 and the relatively good one :)

 and the first one in color

the 5 posters good enough to be exhibited at a later stage

As you can see, the design is indeed simple, but nice (at least for me :P).

It is quite obvious that the first letters of the 5 words assemble PEACE in the first column, right? :)

The planning of the 5th and final poster will be started tomorrow after I disassemble the form and put everything back in their place :). The idea is already there, so no need for pacing around this time :D

Cheers!

Number four on the go :P

I have finally got an idea for the 4th poster and I started preparing it for printing today.
I already said it will be as simple as the Panda poster...and it will!
It will have 5 words in connection with the topic in a column and the first letter of each of the words will spell PEACE. For the purposes of this poster, I have created one more linocut - this time a DOVE, a symbol of peace :).

 here it is :P

 the previous version tested

Me and Kalju ruined the first dove cause we screwed up the white space around the bird. After that Kalju quickly made a new one and the only two differences are that now there's no space between the dove and the blue background and the olive branch she has in her beak will be white, not blue as before.

 final step - underlaying the cliche

all the letters have undergone the first round of underlaying

After this stage follows the setting onto the frame and centralizing everything. I hope I'll be able to finish the poster tomorrow, total of 2 days, cause the design of this poster is very simple and it shouldn't take me too much.

3rd poster - done!

After approximately six long days of work on it, I have finally finished the poster No. 3.
It has been a pain indeed, especially because I had plenty of complications and troubles with the four cliches. But regardless the problems, I have now fulfilled my quota for April - which was to print 3 out of 5 posters. That leaves me 2 more to go, of which the next - 4th one will be very simple (simple as the panda poster).

 already underlayed letters - it took me 2 days just to underlay everything :(

 the first (bad) black/white print

 the frame for this poster

 the first good black/white result :)

 getting ready to print the first colored poster

 and smashing success! :D

 THE 5

+ Gutenberg - he really knows where to lie :P

And so...the 4th poster coming up soon :D.

Cheers!

3rd poster under development :)

I have been preparing everything for the next poster for a few days already. Making the linocuts, cliches, choosing letters, underlaying them, fixing the pressure problems with the Frankenthal...well, a lot of work.

I have finished the cliches and they are almost ready to be used for printing - the only thing left with them is to clean the carvings and polish it afterwards. I have to finish underlaying some more letters as well...but the main part of the work is done. Tomorrow, I'm gonna set it up and test print everything together...we'll see after that what next.

All in all, the plan is to make the black/white poster tomorrow and once I get the white paint we're missing, I can make the final 5 in color. :)

 carving the first linocut - the Japanese kanji for Peace

 already test-printed

 voila :D beautiful!

 second linocut - kanji for Freedom

 and second test

 Third kanji for Equality

 3rd really nice result :D

 the final, 4th linocut -  kanji for Unity

 and the final test-print

 all 4 together

and me - the master calligrapher :P

 and the linocuts

 first test-print of all linocuts made into cliches (glued on wooden blocks)

4 cliches tested one on each side :)

After this part, I have to deal with the text I will use for the poster...but that, together with the final poster results - will be posted in my next blog update :P

Cheers!