Riso an introduction

I first discovered Riso November last year. I had bought a beautiful Riso print from Kristyna Baczynski for my partner's niece at thought bubble after attending her panel earlier that day. She gave me a few people to check out and suggestions in printers.

I went my merry way.

Kristyna Baczynski

She does amazing stuff Cher her insragram

Two days later once the objective of having a table at Thought bubble solidified in my mind. I started crunching up numbers of costs/profits and seeking new avenues to keep the cost low without sacrificing quality and also bring new and original things to the table. I checked the links Krystina kindly gave me, some belonged to risography printers. I fell down the rabbit hole.

Mitch Proctor aka iambonidle

Eva01 re interpretation

Riso printer is basically the love child of a Photocopy Machine and Screen Printing. A film is burned into a drum creating screen that will allow X amount of ink through the film and transfer onto the paper. The printing speed is staggering and the price is dirt cheap as long as you print more than 50, ideally 100+ pages. Great for flyers and fanzines.

Unlike normal printers each drum contains only one ink so in order to achieve more than one color into the page you will need another several passes in order to layer all the colours. That means more drums with another master burn onto it. My short comic it is only 16 A5 pages which is a decent size. Anything printed using this method has a distinct feel to it like days of old. When comics came only on Sundays on a bible size bloc of paper heavy with the smell of fresh ink.

Don’t get me wrong, Riso it is not a perfect method of printing and has its challenges but for a story that happens in 1930s it fit like a tailored glove. I will list some good practices and things to have in mind later on.

Cleonique Hilsaca

Amazing Honduran illustrator maker of adorable stuff

There is a million ways to use Riso. Some people use it because it gives access to special very vibrant inks without breaking the bank with stunning results. Some because their soy-based inks are more environmentally friendly. Others emulate the results of screen printing because the results it gives them are almost identical and have way more control over the process.

Some people like to use flat colours, for others gradients are king, various choose beat tones as their champion or just a mix and match of all of the above. Wether you want something photo realistic or something entirely abstract the sky is the limit.

One of the peculiarities of Riso printing is that the files submitted to create the master are submitted in grey scale. The reason behind it is simple. Anything that is white means no ink will go through creating a reserve. If 100% black means no reserve and the ink will flow freely achieving a solid color. All the shades of grey will give you paler shades of that ink color.

Problem is anything above a 50% black has the risk of making things get sticky and leave a residue on the next copy or the paper sticking to the drum altogether.

Riso does not do well big blocs of solid ink specially if they have a big inkflow on those patches. Introducing noise or beat tones can help with issues. Keeping it 100% black for line work or lettering only it’s a good policy.

If working with more than one colour, use that to your advantage. You can create darker shades or new colours by overlapping masses.

Tom Hardwick

He uses beautiful layered flat to achieve a beautiful landscape

Also have into account that even if you have calibrated a machine to perfection. Filling a color gap from a previous colour print will be hard. Perfect alignment it will be time consuming. Most likely scenario is a white gap will be left. Solve this by increasing the colour bloc slightly allowing some color overlap. It will look better and your sanity will be intact that if you spend 8 hours attempting to achieve a bullseye.

Among all the artist I have discovered and interacted with since last November I wanted to highlight two examples of very different styles.

Natalie Andrewson is the queen of the color world. She works mostly with gradients and noise. One can tell she know how to mix and layer colours to create whimsical images. I learnt a lot thanks to her patreon and analizing her images.

Natalie Andrewson

Tap here to check her Patreon

Natalie Andrewson

Tap here for her insragram

The other person I learnt from a lot from is Ryan Cecil. He uses beat tones to create what is called a moire Rosetta effect distributing the beat tones on certain angles to achieve more controlled colours. He has a little Riso booklet on his site that was of great help understanding how to blend and reach certain colours the way he does. Also his little comics are a delight.

Ryan Cecil

This little jewel helped me a lot to figure things out.
Click here for a link to Ryan's Web site

Ryan Cecil

Just two colours and looks badass.

Here I will list some online resources I have found.

Nous is based in Manchester and they consistently print fanzine and small format magazines. They did one about Riso a few years ago.

Hato press based in London does some amazing stuff.

The Stencil Wiki has a decent directory for you to find places near you.

All images links to some of the amazing people or studios who print for/with them that I have bumped into.

I need to get better at this before printing the comic. Best practice is to find any Riso studio nearby and follow them on social media or go talk to them. They will most likely hold workshops like the one I am attending on the 14th of March.

Kind regards from a stranger worth talking to.

Creative? Trying to get your ship together? Put the kettle on have a cup of tea and join me.

Riso an introduction