Photo courtesy Barkerville archives.
Dr. William Allen Jones was the first dentist licensed in BC. He was born in 1831 in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA and died in Barkerville in 1897. I have not yet succeeded in finding his grave in the Barkerville cemetery. Many tourists peer into his dental clinic on the main street of Barkerville Historic Town near Wells.
Digital mockup used to plan the printing sequence.
Using a photo kindly supplied by the Barkerville archives, I designed a silk screen portrait in 8 colours (above). I chose a 100 pound paper stock that could handle a large area of water based ink (TW 5000 series from Willox Graphics) without significant buckling.
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- Film positives, including hand cut rubylith masking film.
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- Registering the background stencil.
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- Background gradient on screen.
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- Backgrounds drying on rack.
These variations in the background blend show the process of achieving a variety of results – one of the things I enjoy most about printing:
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- Background gradient before adding purple & transparency.
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- Background gradient with more transparency.
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- Background gradient with lots of transparency.
A short clip of printing the background and another clip as seen from above.
Next step: printing the shirt:
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- Shirt print
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- Shirt print
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- Shirt with some transparency.
Printing a gradient base for the jacket:
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- Jacket print on unprinted stock.
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- Jacket added to printed layers
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- Jacket added to printed layers
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- Jacket added to printed layers
Next: the underprint for the head and face:
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- Face underprint by itself
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- Underprint for face.
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- Underprint for face.
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- Underprint for face.
The first posterization of the photo:
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- 1st posterization by itself
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- First posterization.
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- First posterization.
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- First posterization.
Second posterization printed:
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- 2nd posterization by itself
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- 2nd posterization
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- 2nd posterization
Third posterization printed:
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- 3rd posterization by itself
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- 3rd posterization
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- 3rd posterization
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- 3rd posterization
Fourth posterization printed:
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- 4th posterization by itself
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- 4th posterization
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- 4th posterization
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- 4th posterization
A printed gold frame (clear ink mixed with “gold” powder) “traps” the perimeter of the print and any minor misregistrations:
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- Printed with gold frame
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- Printed with gold frame
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- Printed with gold frame
I had a minor problem printing some of the text: a brand new container of black ink was unusually runny and bled a tiny bit on three prints. To solve this, I made a new photostencil with “stroked” text (enlarged) so I could overprint the flaws with white ink. Then I printed the text again with some older, thicker black ink that did not bleed. Problem solved!
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- Ink bleeding beyond text.
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- Stroked text in Illustrator.
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- White overprint
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- Black overprint text
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- Black overprint text closeup
In the end, I used a total of 11 colours. Here are three samples of the final prints with variations among them:
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- darker background
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- smooth background
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- slightly streaked background
This is a fundraiser for the Wells Historical Society, Friends of Barkerville – Cariboo Goldfields Historical Society, and the BC Black History Awareness Society. An order form for this special edition is here.
If we can sell out the edition, each non-profit stands to receive over $2000.00 😉
Thanks to Mandy Kilsby, Caroline Zinz, Silvia Mangue, Claire Kujundzic, Andy MacDougall, Sophia Isajiw, Annerose Georgeson and Richard Tetrault for their assistance and support.
Article about the Dr. Jones print in the Quesnel Cariboo Observer.