The Rockrites CD Cover
I'm working on a CD cover for a good friend of mine, Gidon Shikler. His band name is "The Rockrites" and the album name is "Deeper Groove"... the record release party is this coming Feb 10th @ 9:30pm at the Mint in LA... should be a rockin' affair....
Anyways... I put together a website for him @ www.therockrites.com and did the poster illustration... I used Impact Marketing for the printing and they did a stellar job... had them run @ 11"x17" and UV coated on nice thick stock... came out super cool... Gidon and I were talking about doing the CD cover artwork and I thought it would be a great idea to hand print them with linoleum blocks... Here's where I'm at in the process:
Prepping the stinky brown-black ink
CD Covers that I blocked a few nights ago in blue getting ready for type work
Fresh cover laid out for printing
Getting the brayer inked
Inking the linoleum block for the cover's backplate
Got the linoleum on the cover and the baren ready to smash
Press, press, smash, mash.
Pull it!
Check it!
Get linoleum down for the front side.
Pull it, check it.
Grab 'em, move 'em.
Lay it out with the rest of the stash.
Stash.
Stash close-up.
Custom drying rack. What?
I'll try and get some finishing steps and post 'em later.
PART II - Linoleum block printing the Rockrites CD cover.
Later has arrived and I'm getting ready to roll out the colors for the CD covers.
Prepping the new inks.
Rollin' 'em out.
Coral pink and yellow gradient inky goodness.
Inking the blocks.
Back plate printed.
Both sides printed.
New gradient colors.
Just rolled out the backplate and was left with some lettering on the brayer.
I'm really stoked on the strange, rock-like textures that were created as the blocks were pulled up... totally unexpected... I guess I didn't know what to expect, really... For the record, I used water-based Speedball block printing inks from the online art-supply store, www.dickblick.com; I used black, light red, yellow, blue and white inks. For the linoleum, I used Dick Blick's"Blick's Golden-Cut Linoleum" and cut it with Speedball's linoleum cutting set.
I printed them on plain white gatefold CD covers that I got from http://www.sleevetown.com. Because the CD covers were glossy, however, I had to sand them down a bit to give the surface some texture to hold the ink... took a couple of hours, but was necessary. Next time, I think I'm going to seek out un-coated covers so I don't have the hassle.
Here are two finished covers I scanned the next day:
Enjoy!