Being that this poster is for a show that 'my' band is playing-- I had free rein design-wise. I've been psyched on ants for a while now, and saw this as an opportunity to nerd-out and practice drawing some. The whole process starts with a few thumbnail sketches.
After a few refinements to a sketch, it gets scanned, printed in sections and then inked on the reverse side of the page. It helps to use a light table to see through the page. I have a piece of plexi with a lamp under it. Not ideal, but it works.
For inking, I use a brush-pen made by Pentel, called a Pocket Brush. It's a brush-pen with an ink cartridge contained within. It doesn't clog or drip, and gives a constant flow of ink to the bristles. This allows me to fake, as if I knew how to use a real brush, properly. Awesome!
This shows various states of completion. Sketches, reference imagery, scaled poster mock-ups, inking tests and other déchets.
Once the final image is inked, it gets scanned, touched up, layed-out and reprinted onto posi-paper or vellum. Since the poster is 11" x 17", the positives need to be printed in sections, and taped together. Printing on a laser printer, inevitably things get slightly distorted. Thus, some touch-ups are necessary to ensure a seamless piece.
In order to get the fill layer for the ants, we have to cut a stencil out of rubylith. It's a semi-transparent red film, on a clear, mylar carrier sheet. By cutting lightly, only the ruby layer gets cut and not the carrier sheet. Then, the portions we don't want masked, are peeled away.
Colour separations.
Each colour separation gets exposed to a separate screen. The screens are coated in advance with a photo-sensitive emulsion. The white areas expose to the light and harden, and the black areas are blocked, and wash away with water. This creates a stencil. 
Washout. The screen gets rinsed with water, to wash away the unexposed portions.
Paper gets cut to size, and punched for a registration pin. 
Printing, one layer at a time.
Stacked-up to dry.
First color, second color.
Stacking up...
I tried a few colour-ways. The white ones were mostly just tests for the red layer, but look quite nice themselves. The majority of the prints are with dark yellow ants. Most of the metallic gold prints didn't work wonderfully, but the few that did look awesome! I'd love to try something else with gold in the near future...
Well, thanks for checking these out. If you're interested in screenprinting, consider signing up for a class at Martha Street Studio. If you're interested in music, come out to the show! (March 18th at the Royal Albert Arms, in Winnipeg.) If you're interested in the poster, I might have some extra copies for sale- say $10?
Cheers,
Drex
Cheers,
Drex
