Belly Band

Making my lino prints the wrong way round gave me chance to go back and think about the lettering I was using. I was trying to use lettering similar to the font I had used for the animation and the t shirts but My lino cuts didn't come out as well as the digitally designed fonts. I designed tome more rounded lettering to use on the belly band that I think suites the band much better and makes the book more appealing. I struggled with the printing process. I didn't want the prints to be sharp as I wanted some texture within the print but I kept getting a build up of ink around the letters that made the print blotchy and made the lettering hard to read. I washed the lino block a few times and think I may have added too much ink to the reservoir that was overloading the roller and then the block. I made a  number of test prints then cut six belly bands to print so that I had opportunity to variations of the design. I wanted to add some texture to the rest of the band around the lettering but in the end decided not to use them as the lettering didn't stand out enough. I would like to try this again at some point with different colours to see if that would help.

The colour of the strap matches the colours used in the book and the rough textures of the print work well with the uncovered grey board of the cover. All of the illustrations in the book have textures and rough edges, almost all of the shapes in the book are purposefully not perfect. The only circles in the book that are digitally made and perfect circles are the moons that appear on nearly every page, apart from the all the shapes are hand cut and have imperfections that I think add to the appeal of the illustrations. I think the cover should match the content, the shape of the keyhole is not perfect and neither is the lino print on the belly band, I think this adds the hand made aesthetic of the book as a whole. This sounds like I am aiming excuses for poor crafting on the book but when I say 'perfect' I mean geometrically, the keyhole way drawn and an cut precisely with a craft knife then sanded to create a appealing aesthetic. The project for me has been about experimenting with new techniques and ideas. I wanted the processes to dictate the outcome to some extent. The errors I made during the print processes produced some of the qualities I have used in my final piece. I would like to work with these print processes more in the future, exploring all the possibilities they open up.