ARKELLS: Live at Osheaga, Montreal, Quebec
Each year Osheaga puts on the Music On Paper exhibit curated by the phenomenal poster artist Pat Hamou. A selection of artists create posters for the festivals headliners and they’re displayed and available for purchase in a tent during the festival. Mike DeAngelis, guitar player in Arkells, is also a graphic designer. And after we’d been chatting a little bit he put in a good word with Pat to be featured in the 2022 Music On Paper poster series.
To translate the sunset sky gradient into screenprinting, one common technique is whats called a split fountain, a dégradée, rainbow roll, there’s lots of names for it. But the idea is that you place different colours of ink beside each other on the screen and move the squeegee very carefully. Only moving it along the X-axis just enough to let the colours blend into each other slightly, but not enough so that it all becomes a homogenous colour. This results in each print being just slightly different, as if they’re all snapshots from different points in the sunset.
The band expressed that they’d like to see a rough sketch of a design incorporating some of Montreals Expo ‘67 history. Being that the festival takes place in Parc Jean-Drapeau, right next to the Biosphere, naturally it made sense to include it in the poster. The retrofuturist Biosphere against the sky fresh with stars, and the pigeons with their iridescent purple and green feathers gives the poster a bit of a celestial feel.
To give the poster a little extra oomph, I printed the iridescent feathers on the main pigeons neck with a very tiny green-purple split fountain using metallic ink. That when the light hits it just right it sparkles and imitates the real life sheen of the feathers.
Some signed artist proofs may still be available in my online shop! Head there now to check it out.