There is an animation of the characters’ dialogue projected on the wall before them.

This is Cindy Baker appearing as Cindy Baker.

The mugs were the top seller in the boutique.

They let me grab a quick photo with them.

Tucker appearing for scale.

Waiting around.

Saxon and Kenzie.

I drew this image from Mouse Guard Fall 1152 so I would have something to try out my new Dr. Ph Martin’s watercolours on. Apologies to Mr. Petersen! I’m not so good at using them, but I think it’s a decent start. I first saw Lucy Knisley use them on a Ustream video; she was painting an illustration of The Nanny. Then I saw it in person when I went to TCAF and bought her book  : )

Incidentally, Mouse Guard Fall 1152 and Winter 1152 are super fantastic books if you get a chance to pick them up.

http://vanl-carfac.com/index.php/novembers-member-of-the-month-jennifer-barrett

Hey gang, check out the VANL website, where I am the member of the month for November. I submitted my arty answers to their ten arty questions, and you can read them there.

VANL-CARFAC is basically the major arts advocate organization in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Its mandate is to raise the socio-economic status of the artist, which is pretty awesome.

Also, as a bonus, you may find a picture of me feeding some deer.

I found a used Gocco machine a few weeks ago and finally got around to testing it out today. I needed to be free of all other projects. I took a few pictures to show you. I’m not going to give a full-on tutorial here, since there are plenty of great ones already on the YouTube, with music and everything.

The Gocco is pretty much a self-contained screenprinting apparatus from Japan. It was super popular there for years and years. Unfortunately, they stopped making them a while ago because demand dropped, and now the supplies and machines are a little scarce. It’s kind of heavy on disposable materials as well (screens, bulbs, ink), but I just couldn’t resist trying out this new (to me) printmaking technique. While doing my research, I’ve learned that a lot of ladies out there are using this to print up wedding invites and stationary. If you can get your hands on one for this purpose, I would recommend it. Just read up on it first and be sure you want to do the grunt work.

The screens are made with carbon-based drawings only, so I just went up the road and got some photocopies made of my original drawing. Apparently your laser printer has a bit of carbon in it too, if you have one.

Since this was my first go at it, I decided to stick with a simple line drawing, in order to avoid large areas of ink blocking up or getting splotchy, and any other frustrating obstacles. I was very happy to find that it was very simple and easy to do! The neat thing is that you can print multiple colours with one screen, by blocking off different areas with some foam strips that have adhesive on the back. I cleaned off the ink and switched to a different colour scheme half way through, which worked okay, but the image did break down a little and I got some extra specks around the bigfoot that were not part of the original drawing.

Screen is inked up here and ready to print — you just have to place your paper on the grey spongey block there and then push the top part down, like a big stamp.

KA-CHUNK (it doesn’t really make a sound like that, unfortunately).

There it is.

The ink is oil-based, so it will have to dry for a few hours.

This is the screen after printing is finished.