Posted by Amanda on Oct 06, 2024
Hi friends,
Here's a preview of this month's spot art: mysterious scenes set in modern times. I'm excited about the scribbly linework on these two first two- doing the spot art pieces gives me a chance to experiment with things & see what happens, which I don't do so much if I'm on a tight deadline. 
I've also finished working on the design for a three color riso print! This is the cicada knight trading card, and I'm going to get a buch printed (postcard size) and all subscribers will get one (probably in the next month or so, I'm not sure how long the printing will take).
It took a long time to work out the design because this gets printed like a screenprint- a different layer for each color, but each color can be printed in different intensities. I started by making an ink drawing in black & white (which mostly turned into the blue layer) and then added the other colors underneath. I had to do alot of experimenting & jumping between layers to get the different colors. Before going to the print shop each layer will get converted to greyscale, and then printed in order (yellow, red, blue). Riso prints are often a little messed up, because lining up a multiple color print in something that works like a copy machine is very hard: each individual print will have to go though the machine a seperate time for each color, so there's lots of opportunities for things to get slightly off-set. I've tried to account for that in the print design by putting most of the detail in the blue layer.
I'm really excited to try this out! I've loved the way riso prints look forever & I want to learn how to make pieces that take advantage of their super saturated colors & texture. We had extra cicadas in Chicago this year cause some 17 year ones came up- I went out to the botanic gardens to hear them & it was too loud to talk in some places. I like to think about cicadas because I am drawn to both their habit of living in a dark hole underground for years, and their practice of brief and intense socializing.
I just this week got a copy of Between the Skies by huffa & it is a gorgeous book! I made some pieces for it & there's a ton of art by other people as well- collages & map-like abstract ink drawings. (the book itself is super nice too- the pages are pink on the edges like the cover flower).
This piece that I did is a drawing of the Plane of Eternity, which I generated by rolling on the charts in the book. (The charts in this book work super well- I got an austere plane of eternity & a volcano covered wasteland out of the same set, and each one seemed to have a completey different, coherant character.) (You can get it here: https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/products/between-the-skies-collected-edition
I also got a copy of this adventure for Vaults of Vaarn by Bobby Swanson, you can check it out on Itch here:https://bswan.itch.io/rezvar
I love the maps in this so much- they're by Cody Lee Walker. They seem like they'd be really easy to use, but more importantly there is something about them that makes we want to really get in there and start exploring. Maybe the blue color, plus all the different levels that you could go to? The nightime shadows?
I hope you are having a nice early fall & playing lots of games,
Amanda