Hyper-real jewelled gecko wildlife illustration

Tracing method. This process is performed using a lightbox where light shines through the reference highlighting the areas to be drawn in a careful pointillist method with a Rotring pen onto Mylar film or charcoal pencil onto coquille board.

How it’s done. The Photolitho craft technique of punched registration of the eight hand separated designs is vital to create all eight of the layers “in register” at the drawing & painting stage.

Painting the Maori kowhaiwhai design printed around the garment’s hem onto a sheet of translucent Mylar using a No.3 sable brush, ‘Plum tree’ photo opaque fluid and a drawing bridge.

Shaun applies spray adhesive to the printing pallets, Deborah McDonald places the T-shirts. If designs like the base light green are touch dry between each screen pass then wet ink areas “offset” onto the underside of the next screen, which in turn causes the cotton fabric to adhere to the screen and then lift… aaargh! Chrissie Terpstra in the background is loading the 8 screenprinting stencil frames with their respective inks.

Eight colour designs were printed in editions of 80—100 garments per day. Starting at print station one, Deborah hand screenprints the first colour, light green onto the front of the locally made pure cotton teeshirt.

Chrissie Terpstra follows Deborah McDonald printing the first colour down the row of 10 aluminium & rubber composite printing stations with ‘Flash Gordon’, our customised water-based ink ‘flash-cure’ unit and high-efficiency nasty volatiles extractor unit on wheels.

Chrissie prints the third colour, orange, then as Deborah moves Flash Gordon from station to station in-sync with a 30-second timer, Chrissie uses a paint-stripping gun to dry off print’s most saturated areas.

Chrissie follows Deborah printing red with super opaque metallic golden eyes and scale detail. After “flashing off” the wet inks, next minute Chrissie prints the black to finish the design.

A stickler for detail Chrissie proofs each black design while the ink is still wet and manually touches up the black to ensure it is solidly covering where it is supposed to cover. Deborah follows with Flash Gordon, strips the printed shirts off and reloads with the next set of set of blank tees.

Final heat cure of the print on the pallet, stripping the finished Tees off and reloading the next run of 10. This process start to finish took two people labouring hard-out for 45 minutes. A lunch break from this hard labour on your feet the whole time was essential, sit-down lunches at the table which amazing Chrissie Terpstra cooked for our crew of Screen Gems every single day! Morning and afternoon coffee/tea and snacks were delivered and consumed on the fly.

‘Jewelled Gecko – New Zealand’ eight colour T-shirt print on dark green fabric. Placement; Eight colour front print, one colour kowhaiwhai print front and back around hem.

‘Jewelled Gecko – New Zealand’ eight colour T-shirt print on dark green fabric. Placement; Eight colour front print, oone colour kowhaiwhai print front and back around hem.

Surface Active art-to-wear: making waves in a sea of sameness.

Surface Active T-shirt swingtag front.

Surface Active T-shirt swingtag back.

New Zealand native Jewelled Gecko—Naultinus Gemmeus: From wildlife illustration for hand-screenprinting to a limited edition large format Giclée…

Surface Active was an auto-printmaking, craft and design pARTnership established in 1986 by Chrissie Terpstra and Shaun Waugh. Between 1986–2002 we were committed to producing original & indigenous wildlife art designs of the highest design and screenprinting standards, providing a more interesting and beautiful product than your average tee—wearable art that celebrates the unique assets of New Zealand.

“How do we do it? Hours spent at the drawing board, artfully rendering each separate colour to give vibrancy and detail (Shaun). Crafty low-tech, hand-pulled screenprinting techniques allow us to create finely detailed designs, brought to life on the garment (Chrissie)—wild art to wear.”

“It is a great job and we get to do it!” Chrissie wrote in the intro to the Surface Active 1995 mail order catalogue.

Jewelled Gecko (Naultinus Gemmeus) original fine art print by Surface Active

Over recent years high resolution scans and meticulously re-creations of the original, master multicolour screenprint wildlife artworks are being re-created as large size, high resolution digital fine art prints. The Jewelled Gecko is the first of these designs to be completed.

The Jewelled Gecko Giclée or wide-format inkjet print is an Archival Digital Pigment Print on Museum Grade Fine Art Paper, to be published in a signed, limited edition of 250.

This portfolio of wildlife art Giclée was the substance of the Surface Active Retrospective exhibition (1986–2021) in December–January 2021 at the New Brighton gallery.

The illustration method

The artwork was created at the drawing board using;

enlarged, photographic reference purchased from renowned New Zealand wildlife photographer Rod Morris,
drawing a pointillist illustration using 0.35mm technical pen over the photo as the “keyline” layer for the 8 colour separations,
drawing on the medium of either transclucent mylar architectural drafting film,
charcoal pencil onto “coquille board”.

Credits

Crafty screenprinters: Deborah McDonald, Chrissie Terpstra
Gecko Illustration reference photos: Rod Morris
Illustrator: Shaun Waugh
Design and Art Direction: Design pARTners Chrissie Terpstra & Shaun Waugh