same planet you live on,” says J.P. Boneyard. Boneyard (née Boilard) is the designer, printmaker, and mastermind behind 59 Parks Print Series, a screen-printed poster collection celebrating the National Parks of U.S. and Canada. Inspired by the WPA posters of the ‘30s and ‘40s, the series (so far they’ve completed 61) is designed by a talented roster of artists and screen-printed in the highest quality possible. Many of the dozens of artists involved were a part of Boneyard’s National Poster Retrospecticus, a travelling poster show he started in 2006. “We felt like we had this awesome collective of friends and artists,” Boneyard says. “So we wondered what would it look like if we had a series that took all these unique voices and made something somewhat cohesive.” Well, “somewhat cohesive” translated to “pretty awesome.” We talked to three designers from the series about their processes, inspirations, and how to depict nature using just six colors.
Parks
A glimpse into the creative process behind the 59 Parks Print series.
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How does screen printing work? Screen printing is a process by which mesh is used to transfer ink to a surface, except in areas that are blocked by a stencil. Multiple blocking stencils must be created in order to transfer multicolor screen prints, which makes the 59 Parks Posters an impressive feat in the world of screen printing. Many of the poster designs were sent to Seattle’s DL Screen Printing, a favorite of collectible poster company Mondo. “They have really fine screens, so you can have picture-perfect dithering that a lot of other studios can’t capture,” Hummel explains, “I can put in a gradient, and know they’ll be able to print it, as opposed to other studios where it would just sort of flatten out into two colors. Being able to trust that your art is going to be handled really nicely? Phew. That’s wonderful!”
story By Nathan Eckhous Design by LUcy quintanilla
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"it
just blows your mind that it exists in the same country, the
Claire Hummel didn’t wait for Boneyard to call, but reached out to him directly. “I said, ‘I’ve never done screen-printing before, but I think I’d be good at it, and I’m obsessed with national parks’,” says Hummel says, who is the art director for video game distributor Valve and an avid park-goer. She sent Boneyard some plein air drawings she’d done at parks to try and entice him. It worked. Hummel contributed three posters to the series—Mesa Verde, Capitol Reef, and her favorite, Bryce Canyon. “I love that park so much!” she says. “It has so many interesting shapes.”
Claire Hummel
Courtesy of 59 parks
Bryce Canyon National Park
national parks
3D model: Mesa Verde
Capitol Reef Step-By-Step
Park Poster Ideation
Utah, est. 1928
Mesa Verde National Park
Colorado, est. 1906
Capitol Reef National Park
Utah, est. 1971
Click below to see Claire’s process
Bryce Canyon in Layers
“I would build myself a little palette on the side of the screen that was just six colors and use that to sketch in an idea, and ask, ‘Can I get this lighting situation with roughly these colors, or would I need to change it?’”
Hummel created 3D-rendered models of ancestral pueblo drawings in Mesa Verde to prep for the poster. “I do these hatched drawings of rocks in the southwest or ghost town. This was taking that hatching style I had been doing in the field and adapting it.”
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Donaldson Collection (Monroe, Lincoln), Michael Ochs Archives (Angelou), George Rinhart (Einstein) , Bettmann (Parker, BeRrA), Justin Sullivan (jobs), J. Countess (buffett), MICHEL CLEMENT,DANIEL JANIN/AFP (mandela)/GETTY IMAGES
courtesy of claire Hummel
BRYCE CANYON sketch 02
BRYCE CANYON sketch 01
CAPITOL ReEF Sketch 01
Mesa Verde sketch 01
CAPITOL ReEF Sketch 02
“I would build myself a little palette on the side of the screen that was just six colors and use that to sketch in an idea, and ask, ch can i get this lighting situation with roughly these colors, or would I need to change it?"
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courtesy of 59 parks
“I do these hatched drawings of rocks in the southwest or ghost towns or all sorts of things...this was pretty much taking that hatching style I had been doing out in the field and finding a way to adapt that to five or six colors.”
courtesy of claire hummel
green
TANGERINE
rust
Blue
“I wanted to do parks that were special to me. I’ve been to Bryce the most. It was my first choice.”
GOLDenROD
chocolate
Tap each color to add a layer to the screen print
“It is totally a puzzle to solve. There were so many times things would be weirdly layered in a way that’s easy to do in Photoshop, without thinking about the order that the colors would be put down.”
Woodard, head of Brave the Woods design studio in Austin, has created two individual park posters and two variants of a U.S. national park map for the entire series. It was a big design departure from the bright, graphic work he does for his children’s books. “It’s a completely different beast, the whole technique was different,” he says. “I got to do a screen-printed poster, but in a painterly style, which isn’t normal. I got to be loose and layer all my colors, which is how I like to do children’s book illustrations, but then I added texture on top of that.” Boneyard soon tapped Woodard for a bigger undertaken—two variations of a nation-wide map of the parks inspired by ‘60s gas station road maps. “The first map was six colors, but we did a variant that was black and gold,” he says, “And that was super hard, all of the decisions that you make in illustration had to change, because I only have two colors to separate the layers.”
Brad Woodard
Big Bend
Stages of Big Bend
Big Bend in sketches
Texas, est. 1944
Yellowstone
WY, MT, ID, est. 1872
Click below to see BRAD’s process
Yellowstone’s Colors
“In the screen printing process, the more colors, the more expensive, because you have to make more screens. JP said I could go crazy on color because they printed in CMYK, which looks like a thousand colors but is actually only four—cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.”
NATIONAL PARKS MAPS
USA
courtesy of brad woodard
“It’s the same process I would do for a children’s book without that texture and technique. When you look at flat vector images, they’re less approachable or tangible. They look like, ‘Oh, that was literally generated by a computer.’ If you can add some value changes in a color, super subtle so you can see hints of orange or little flecks of blue, really makes it feel more dynamic or authentic. A lot of my work I throw a little bit of that in—it feels more dimensional.”
“It’s the same process I would do for a children’s book without that texture and technique. When you look at flat vector images, they’re a less approachable or tangible—they look like, “Oh, that was literally generated by a computer.” If you can add some value changes in a color, super subtle so you can see hints of orange or little flecks of blue, really makes it feel more dynamic or authentic. A lot of my work I throw a little bit of that in—it feels more dimensional.”
For children’s book illustrator/landscape artist Kim Smith, the 59 Park series’ subject matter and style were familiar friends. “I felt pretty comfortable doing the Cuyahoga print,” she explains. “I love to create landscape illustrations.” It was the process, however, that was most challenging. Smith had designed for screen-printing before, but only one color designs. “For this project I was trying to utilize more than one color and figure out how to adapt a painterly illustration style,” she says. “It was a bit difficult to wrap my head around. I did manage to keep Cuyahoga to a limited color palette, but the screen-printers did all the hard work in order to separate it out and translate it beautifully.” As a Canadian, she was drawn to the blue-green palette of Banff National Park, and pulled inspiration from Cuyahoga’s autumnal color palette. “That was my jumping-off point,” she says.
Banff
Cuyahoga’s Colors
Landscape Tests
Cuyahoga Valley
OH est. 2000
Click below to see Kim’s process
“The research phase is generally where things will dictate the mood of colour palette. I try and find inspiration here of how to make each image unique. Cuyahoga, has beautiful east coast fall colors, so that was my jumping off point.”
KIM SMITH
“A lot of my professional work is in children’s books, but when I’m not illustrating books, I love to create landscape illustrations. This is the same art style that the Cuyahoga print is done in.”
