Review; "Print Me. Graphic Design and Printing"

Located on the corner of Bourke St and Russell St in Melbourne's CBD, 'Print Me' is by far the most impressive printing company I've been to. High quality prints, on the day service, and very, VERY affordable, which is a God-send for anyone on a budget, and any art student with a major project to complete.  

My former preferred printers was 'Toucan Digital" on St Georges Rd, but that closed down more than a year ago. So I had to put my Google skills to use and find myself a new printers. For the most part it looked like I was going to have to get my work printed at Officeworks. I can tell you that is the last thing I wanted to do; the last time I had a project printed at Officeworks the quality was mediocre, it took almost an hour of a few A6 sized photos to be printed, and I was not impressed with their "customer service"((I don't care how bad your whole 5 minutes at work have been, you give me that 'Bitch Please" Chris Crocker look again and I'm going to slap it right off your face)).

So amongst all the options I was given I clicked on 'Print Me' and was greeted by a most charming website full of bright colour and pretty much any and all information I'd need to know about their printing options. They print anything from business cards and letterheads to wedding invitations, posters, raffle tickets and many other options suited to your needs. However, they didn't have a list of prices, but they said they were very affordable. They do provide a 'request quote' online option, but I called up instead. I asked about price and on-the-day service and being very surprised by the quote given I headed down to Print Me to have my work printed. The office is quite small, and there was only one girl working there, but boy was she efficient.

Are you ready for this?
Four A3 posters, full colour, matte finish, 250gsm, beautiful quality, $6.
That's right! Something that anywhere else would have cost me $200 only cost me $6! And they were printed in 5 minutes. Holy Jesus! Best printing company ever!

If I had one negative point it's that you have to press an intercom button to enter the building and theirs was broken, so I had to call them so they could open the doors for me.

But seriously, if you have something you need printed, go to;

Print Me
3A, 190 Bourke St
Melbourne VIC 3000

Or  check out their website and order from there: Print Me website                
Happy Printing!

Quick Note

I swear new art will be coming soon, it's all just a bit hectic with school coming to the end of term and getting ready for assessment, and working personal work around all that is quite difficult, or maybe I'm just making excuses, maybe both.

Long Overdue

No excuses here really, long story short, I suck at time management and sadly my blog has had to suffer the consequences of my lack of organization. Well here are a few things to get you up to speed.
>School work has been a little hectic and I'm trying my hardest to not fall behind (it's not really working though) so hopefully buy the end of the year I'll have a tone of images to upload
>The artist book I last mentioned is coming along quite nicely.

I've begun the pages and the outer and inner covers of the book, soon all I'll need to do is stitch it together. The leather has been cut and embossed (turns out when you buy leather wholesale you have to buy half a god damn cow!) and the final embellishments are being added.
The bonus of this book being made is that with every new page I'm also completing a section of the comic that I hope will become a full published work in the next year (maybe year and a half..two years max). Character development is rather entertaining and rewarding when you finally draw that perfect hero or villain, like creating a real human, just less messy. I still struggle with landscape and buildings so that is another area I've been slowly progressing in. All the drawings for my artist book and comic are a mixture of pencil sketches and ink paintings. I've then been changing the tone of the the paper on photoshop to give it a sepia hue and make it appear more like a workbook of an inventor or engineer (Well I think it looks good, you'll all just have to wait and see.)

I do have some personal work that needs uploading, but like I said school has been and is my main priority right now. After this week there's only two weeks left of school, followed by catchup week and then I'll have completed my first year of tafe. This year has gone by too quickly. I'll be glad when it's summer and I can pay more attention to updating my blog with new art, and some pieces I've been meaning to upload for some time. I'll upload a little 'work in progress' photo of a piece I've been painting inspired by a poem in a game of the same name; 'Grim Fandango'

 

There you go, my oil painting in progress. I'm having a little trouble uploading pictures of my artist book (the start of it anyway) but hopefully I can get it working soon and I'll try harder to keep my blog updated more often. Cheers!

     

Mirrors and Shadows; Mongoose

IT'S ALIVE!!! 

Well, no, it's stuffed, very much dead. It just reminds me of an old B-Grade horror film. Does this Mongoose look familiar? Stage 1 print of my final dark room work for school. Black and white film.

Etchings

FINALLY! For a week now my internet has been lagging so much Blogspot wouldn't load, I waited of an hour at one point and not so much as a loading screen loaded. But at last my internet seems to be up and running again.

Back in May I uploaded my design for a mongoose hard ground copper etching , and it's only now I've found the time to scan the finished product. This is one out of six prints (6/6) and it is by far the best print.

As an extra, for my plastic dry-point etching, I've been obsessed with watching game play-through videos of 'SLENDER' on YouTube, and decided I had to do an etching of him...it..whatever Slender is.

Both are printed on Arches paper. (When I find the docket I can tell you the exact type.)

Recreate Emotion

It's been a busy past few days, and emotional. This morning my sister left with two of her friends to South America for a 4 month holiday. Well it might be more like 7 weeks, but it was still an emotional time for our little family. Before she left, I painted a small gift for her, just a bit of water colour to say thank you for being such an amazing person and sister. Click here if you want to see it...

It got me thinking about how art is one of the greatest ways to express yourself, display your emotions out in front of you in their truest form. Even though we or others may see it or understand it, the greatest way to express emotions, ideas, beliefs and whatever inner most workings may be going on in ones mind. I drew another little sketch that is exactly that. I'm not sure why I drew this, but I knew I had to. Still a work in progress but the basis of it is there.

 

Time to get Crafting!

I'm very bad with time management, and this can be shown by the fact I'm already getting ready to make my final project for Digital Media when I still have lots of printmaking and Photography to finish, but I just can't help myself! When we were told we had to make an book of our art I instantly knew I wanted to make a book of all the production art I've draw for a graphic novel I'm working on with a friend. Hand sewn, leather bound, and stained with sepia tones to look like an old engineer/inventors personal journal. I'll be using the tutorial I linked a while ago by TRANSiENTART in my post Art Journal Tutorial.
It's probably going to be the project I'm going to put the most effort into, even though I should really put equal effort into all my projects, I just love books! I'm going to research different techniques like leather embossing and DIY wax seals to add really effective elements to this project, I've already found a few good ones. Time to get crafting!
And while I'm doing so, I shall be listening to the melodic symphonies of Abney Park. Bring on the Steampunk!