Dear Reader
I recently had a workshop about printing with a Risograph machine. In the print room at the university, my first-year tutor talked through the process and showed us some examples of Risograph prints; he then gave us a demonstration.
A Risograph is a bit like a screen print but instead of preparing it manually and using a squeegee, the printer does all the hard work. The machine itself looks like a photocopier. Despite the university having four different colour drums (black, yellow, pink, and blue), the Risograph printer can only hold two at a time, this means that you can only print with two colours at once.
To print with this machine, you must first make one image for each colour layer. The image needs to be in monochrome so that it is sharp enough for the Risograph to make a stencil; greyscale can be achieved digitally.
Due to much of my recent work being digital, I welcomed the chance to draw and be creative in a more traditional way. I set about drawing my wheelchair using a Sharpie and leaving no room for error; I found this quite liberating as it forced me to accept any imperfections. I was pleased with the result. As I liked my wheelchair illustration so much, I decided that I didn’t want to overcomplicate the result, so for my second image I just prepared a background shape which helped to frame my initial drawing.
I am happy that I had a go at this, as the outcome was a success (see photo). The conventional silk screen printing process has always been challenging for me due to my shoulders dislocating easily, making pulling a squeegee dangerous to do; however, the Risograph takes away the physical strain of printing and means I can still be creative but in a safer way.
Doing this workshop has opened new possibilities for me and I look forward to using this medium again.
