Portland, Maine, United States
March 2023
Entitled “Welcome to the Wonderful World of Spring, this month’s print is a doodle-filled, eight-page Risograph Zine. It features a menagerie of cats, a few gulls, and is bright with the first signs of spring in Maine.
Printed (by me!) it at the lovely Pickwick Press in Portland, Maine
Song Inspiration: “Reach Out” by Sufjan Stevens
Accompanying Written Piece
“Notable Events of March”
Snow
Rain
Maple Syrup!
The Crocuses Have Bloomed
Society has the Audacity to Mess with Time
MUD, MUD, MUD
The Sun Feels Warm Again
I put my Feet in the Ocean (Still Cold)
You Can Hear the Birds in the Morning
The Neighborhood Cats Are Out and About
I often design my Riso prints digitally but for this piece I did each layer by hand.
I wanted to see how different media would work with the riso printer, the machine can only pick up so much detail. I experimented with paint, markers, and pens.
Riso prints must be designed in layers because you can only print one color at a time. I made a light table by putting a flashlight in a plastic bin so I could make sure all my layers lined up.
Riso prints have a scanner bed that picks up the image and burns it into a thin paper which is wrapped around a drum of ink. The ink is then pushed through that paper screen to create your print. (note this yellow ink drum has residuals of pink ink because the pink background layer was still wet when I printed the yellow.. some people wait a week between layers but I just print layers strategically)
With Riso you can print many prints very fast but you trade accuracy for speed. If you are not careful you will get odd registrations or textures. The machines are very finicky and have a lot of personality. That can give you beautiful unique interesting prints or it can be just super frustrating.
Once my prints were done and had dried for a week I began folding them. I put a clean piece of paper between the print and my hand so not to smear it. Riso Ink never 100% dries so you must be careful handling the prints or it will rub off like charcoal or graphite.
To make an eight page zine out of a single sheet of paper all you need is some clever folding and a single cut in the middle. It is easy to find tutorials online.
Once they were done I packaged them up and sent them off to my family. I decorated the envelopes with some hand colored stickers that matched the zine's background.