Project: Numinous | Moldwitch;
Type of commission: Custom art and A2 linocut print;
Client: Robbie Trevino.
Robbie Trevino is a conceptual artist and illustrator based in Los Angeles, California. He is currently working as a senior artist at Lucasfilm, some of his clients include: Tool, Magic the Gathering (Wizards of the Coast), Netflix, Valve, Xbox, Mondo, 3D Total, ArtStation and many more.
Robbie commissioned me in 2021 to create a custom art print.
Work in progress. Search for letters.
Robbie's personal art style is exceptional and recognisable. I was contacted by Robbie and he commissioned me to create something similar to his illustrations but in my own style. Simply put, I had to make a version of his illustration that looked like an old manuscript, or ancient map or a magic scheme. Or as an old torn paper from the relic book that was out of this world. Or everything included.
My working progress started from the search for proper letters and text's emotional tone. Since Robbie's "Numinous" project is all about combination of bionic and mechanic, I had to find a proper tune for the letters. Down below you can see suggested variants. Font legibility was not an obligatory task, but still I suggested something on an edge of being illegible. If you look closely enough you may read, but in all other cases this is just "random symbols".
Even though some of these sketches did not get into the final art piece, they are worth exposing.
Illustration process
"Moldwitch" is an illustration that Robbie created in 2018. Symbols that are used in this illustration were provided to me by Robbie as well as descriptions and certain details. I can't publish them publicly, sorry.
"Moldwitch" is really focused on arms, so I did a lot of arms too. In addition, I've created series of "molding hands" illustrations just to test out my possibilities and to mentally tune into creation of final art piece. This was a necessity since I had big plans for the physical print.
Linocut process. Handcarving.
Truth be told, this is the first time I've ever approached A2 format in terms of making an actual linocut. It was incredibly tedious and laborious task to cut out the sketch due to enormous amount of details. The whole process took me more than 7 days of hard work to cut out, but making a printing plate was only the first step.
The key thing is that the cutting was done according to the composition's dominant lines.
The key thing is that the cutting was done according to the composition's dominant lines.
Test printing.
First test prints were done with black paint on Shoji paper (Japanese rice paper). The transparency of this paper helped me to see if there's any errors on the print plate. After that I tried printing on thick black paper with white paint. This was harder since I didn't have a proper press for such task. That's why I've printed it completely manually and even tried to add embossing.
I've even tried to print on fabric, but the main problem when doing linocut white paint fabric print is that the paint after drying fades and never remains pure white.
Also for minor sketch printing I've tried printing using photopolymer plate. It looked cool, however when compared to the hand-carved plate it somehow lacks plasticity in artistic meaning.
Final Print. Aging a print.
The paper for final piece was bought at local art supplies store and it had to go through several steps of dyeing. I was using coffee as a warm-tone dye and indian ink as a contrary cool-tone dye. This took several days of coloring and drying attempts, but at the end the combination of both dyes went extremely well.
AS I've said before I was printing completely by my hands, but this turned out even better than printing with a press. I could manually control the level of embossing and color fill in certain areas. After printing and drying, I was adding even more details with white ink. After that I was aging a print via different methods, but I found out that sand paper with 360 grit gives the best results.
Final Results.
The final prints turned out exceptionally well. Paper aging didn't turned out bad as I was expecting, since I was trying to do as less as possible damage to the print. But after discussion with Robbie he suggested to do more aging, so that's what I did. He was not wrong.
The delivery process was really tough due to war and slowed global shipment, since the first parcel with extras was lost somewhere in USA in April 2022. We've been patient but that didn't show any results. I've sent the second print in September 2022 and it arrived to the client pretty fast. This is the exact case where making two art copies for a client to choose was a good idea.
Conclusion.
I'm really honoured that I was contacted and commissioned by Robbie. During the work progress he suggested several ideas that I've implemented into final art piece.
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I hope you've liked this project. Please appreciate and share.
See you soon,
Viktor Pushkarev
2022
