Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
D&AD 2012 Student Awards - Illustration - Little White Lies magazine cover
Competition Brief:
Create an original cover illustration for Little White Lies magazine, depicting the main character of one of our five favourite films of 2011: Drive, Black Swan, The Tree of Life, Super 8, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
I've chosen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, not because I even liked the movie so much, but being a great fan of Gary Oldman I thought it would be a great pleasure to draw a portrait of him.
To create this image I began with cutting out the face features from the scrim, a fabric that can be found in any printmaking studio. I made four different layers of the cut-outs, which gave the tonal variation of the face. Scanned cut-outs were than used to make screens for each colour layer in the screen printing process.
Create an original cover illustration for Little White Lies magazine, depicting the main character of one of our five favourite films of 2011: Drive, Black Swan, The Tree of Life, Super 8, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
I've chosen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, not because I even liked the movie so much, but being a great fan of Gary Oldman I thought it would be a great pleasure to draw a portrait of him.
To create this image I began with cutting out the face features from the scrim, a fabric that can be found in any printmaking studio. I made four different layers of the cut-outs, which gave the tonal variation of the face. Scanned cut-outs were than used to make screens for each colour layer in the screen printing process.
I decided also to experiment with other printmaking techniques. The etching was particularly challenging since I wanted to achieve different thickness of the line for each scrim layer. After few unsuccessful trials I came up with the process of applying aquatint onto the zinc plate first, and then (while the plate is still hot) rolling it with the soft ground, which was then used to get the impression from the scrim cut-out. The plate was then etched in acid and the whole process repeated again, every time reducing the etching time, until all four layers were etched into the plate. The final image (below right) is printed from a single zinc plate.
The left-over scrim was used to make two collagraph prints.
Collagraph process uses a plate collaged with different textures. A base plate is usually a mountcard with various materials applied using PVA glue. The process is a combination of intaglio and relief printing techniques.
