Risograph Printing – Circus Horse

I tore into an old Illustrator file and took it apart to experiment more in Risograph printing before winter break. I chose to revisit the circus horse that I vectored much earlier in the year. Separating the layers and simplifying the image was a little bit of a pain, since I made the original image with no intent to print it as a Risograph. But the outcome is something that I’m very happy with!

Riso circus horse!!

I had planned for the illustration to use four inks, and I would have liked them to have been black, teal, red, and yellow. The yellow ink would have been used for detail on the blanket and to add texture to the background. However, I wasn’t happy with the results, so I cut that colour out all together. I think the three colours used here work together well.

The majority of the horses are printed on different coloured sugar paper. Some are printed on white card. I would like to look into printing the illustration on card of different colours in the future. I might even be able to include the fourth colour if I can tweak the original image enough, but I don’t consider it a necessity for the image to work anymore.

Horses on different coloured papers

Thinking about it, I would like to try printing grey horses, with dappled fur either using black or teal for the detail. Really, there’s nothing stopping me from printing fluro pink horses other than my own sensibilities.

I tidied up the tiger assets I already had for a mini print

After cleaning up the tiger illustration I had practiced Riso prating with, I made the graphic into an A5 mini print and then printed the same image onto card to make B5 greeting cards. It’s just experimentation, but I’ve learned a lot thus far. I’d like to make some illustrations from scratch with the intent of printing them this way – it’ll streamline the whole process.