Shades of Grey
The steamy book, 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James, has been lighting up kindles since its release last year. It was only a matter of time before it found its way from the bestseller rack to the printshop. Canadian artist Marnie Blair sent us pics of this pedagogically-useful t-shirt. As Marnie says, “I have not read the book nor am I particularly interested. As a printmaker, I couldn’t help but buy this shirt this morning for $25 from the Crock of Shirt booth at the market in Kamloops, BC, Canada! I will wear it when I am teaching students halftones and diffusion dithers in
screen printing or even aquatint.” Nice!
Categories: Print-related
I must say, nice work on those lighter shades with the halftones. I have a strong interest in them since I am a screen printer and made my own little process book of experiments with halftones to get different effects. I wish illustrator took on the past inside feature freehand used back when adobe took macromedia over. I knew a printer who did some real interesting blends with that feature.
Wow, so cool to see that you are enjoying the shirt!
I used Illustrator CS3 for this project. I first made 50 boxes. To get 50 shades of grey and not pure white or black, I used 50 values between 2% K and 98% K. I then selected each box, Effect > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Then Object > Expand Appearance. After that, I used Live Trace, which allowed me to convert the graphics to vector shapes. Once complete, all shapes were selected and made 100% CMYK. Then align the boxes to the pattern you see in the finished design. This was printed with two screens.
Kurt
Thanks for insight on the process. I may need to experiment with that some. I have a inrip system I use to produce my film, but had not tried something like that. I will experiment with that some and see what kind of results I can produce. Thanks again.
You’re welcome. I have never used any rip software, but it is something I am considering. I quite enjoy separating everything manually, as it feels more like I’m crafting something using my own skills. However, things like complex halftones are near impossible for me to attain (maybe that’s just me, I dunno). The shading I tend to do for our shirt designs is more like mono-spaced circles – something like Roy Lichtenstein’s stuff, which I really like.
I will say that if your doing some illustrations in painter or photoshop, the rip makes life a bit easier. I will say I too love the hands on affair with print. I spent so much time behind a computer when I used to design newspapers that it felt sort of hollow. Going back to print making feels more like a craft I can enjoy and be apart of the whole process, not just pressing buttons.