Kim Ku / Inverted Love

Ghosts have been on my mind lately so I decided they should haunt a hotel.

So far, the plan is for this to be a 6-page accordion silkscreen book. I’ve been burnt out a bit since MOCCA, so I’ve been taking it slow. Slow and steady, right?

Some preliminary sketches:

Now that the silkscreen lab is closed,  it’s time to catch up on sleep and plan for the summer which means…

• More silkscreen book projects prep. More ghosts and monsters.
• And the my ignored comic, Skeletons in Your Closet, will continue:

A few weeks ago, one of my favorite screens decided to buckle and break. It happens a lot but I always feel nostalgic and a little sad every time.

Printing with certain colors will sometimes cause some of the image to stick on the screen even after an intense scrubbing– this if often referred to as ghosting. So what you see below is a visual history of what my screen had helped me create.

It’s helped me through many struggles and successes, so cheers you broken screen!

If by chance, one day, you find yourself sketching something strange in your sketchbook…

Maybe it’s worth refining it again despite your reservations…

And if you’re feeling a little better about it, take that picture to the next level…

… and screen print it!

Ghost Pizza
Edition of 25
4.5″ x 3.5″ (Postcard size)
2 colors: hand-mixed red and transparent yellow (for ghost-iness)

Here are 2 greeting cards runs I made 2 weeks ago. Each batch of 25 cards used 4 colors and took about 3 hours to print.

I've been sick for the past few days so you can get this for me!

Let the balloons do all the smiling for you

I don’t normally make greeting cards like these but my friend Alex and I are going to set up shop at the Bust Craftacular this year on April 14th. We helped Bust screen print their event poster so they graciously gave us 1/2 a table to sell our goods! I have a few more non-book goods on the menu and I’ll show you soon!

The best part of Day Off is over– the printing is complete! The tedious part is now upon me– cutting and printing. Making mistakes in this stage always breaks my heart so I make sure I’m awake and pumped before I begin putting my knife to paper. Unfortunately, tonight is not the night, but I’ve uploaded a sample I made a few days ago just to make sure things will work out.

I've been into mini books lately...

Two colors!

Three colors!!!

A sanity check for Day Off.

Here I’ve silkscreened 3 out of the 6 colors I’ll be printing. The blue marker art was drawn quickly by me so I had a clearer idea of what’s going on.

Fully assembled book

Middle spread

Middle spread fold out!

Planning phase for a new silkscreen book Day Off.

Yesterday, I made time to print the first of three colors.

I’m excited already! Stay tuned…

I’m nearing the end of Hearts & Holes, so in an attempt to remain spoiler-less…

I’m using these….

…to turn pages like this…

…into this…

Brought to you by:

2 brush pens (one for the trees, one for the outlines)
4 rapidograph pens, (2 for outlining the small images, 1 for making sand texture and one for the text)
1 pencil
1 eraser
1 White out pen
1 White out bottle
1 sadly dry brush for white out that I forgot to wash out

There are about 16 pages to go and I average 1 page a night… so hopefully this step in the process will be done in 2 weeks. I’m going to keep truckin’!

I’m always on the hunt for white out pens.

1. Deleter Whiteout 2 (Winner from the last test)
2. Deleter Whiteout 1
3. Copic Opaque White
4. Krink Paint Marker
5. Molotow Paint Marker

Last time I tried this test, Deleter Whiteout 2(#1) won the contest begrudgingly (that was the the control). Dissatisfied, I found a few more promising prospects and I’m back for Round 2. Once again, the goal is to promote laziness so the whites that require the least amount of layers and the least amount of tools will win.

I’ll be testing on this:

I used a Pentel Brush Pen to write this.

Here goes:

Results after 1 layer

3. Copic Whiteout
A commenter was nice enough to drop the hint on Copic Whiteout on my last test. I bought it and I have to say, it’s quite nice. It comes in kind of a solid-thick-paste, so I had to use some water to loosen the paint up to actually start to soak it into my brush. This is the only downside– figuring out the proportion of water to ink — but other than that, I’d say this is also a solid choice.

4. Krink White Paint Marker
I keep dropping money on paint pens and so few of them have worked for me. This one is no exception. This is a felt tip acrylic pen that works on glass, metal and some paper. Unfortunately, on vellum, it comes out too thin, oily and generally not pleasing. I knew from the first layer that it wasn’t going to work out between us so I didn’t try for a second.

5. Molotow White Paint Marker
I was ready to be disappointed with this pen but using after the first layer, it filled me with a lot of hope. The first layer, as you can see above, isn’t great– it doesn’t fare better than the worst performing non-pen. Wait a few seconds though, apply a second layer, and prepare to be amazed.

I'M SO AMAZED.

Conclusion: I’m tempted to say that at least for now, my white out search is on hiatus. I’ve found solutions for my inking woes in both bottled form and pen form. Here are my picks in my humble opinion:

Best Pen: Molotow White Paint Marker
It may take 2 layers to get it working but the paint dries fairly fast and the results are surprisingly good. This will be my go-to for smaller mistakes like spelling or stray lines. Not recommended for larger areas that need white out– it feels like a waste of time to use this white out in this way.

Best Bottled Whiteout: Deleter Whiteout 2
It’s thicker in consistency than the Deleter Whiteout 1 but doesn’t need water to dilute it like the Copic White. It’s the perfect combination of coverage, efficiency and laziness. This will definitely be what I’ll use for those large mistakes like spilled ink or poorly inked things.