Bear shaman - Native American

Now that I have decided to come back to the shaman heads as they are much more suited to clothing, skateboards, tote bags and more, It is time to develop this further and refine. I have gone for another native american shaman for this design because I really wanted to have a bear headdress. I have also drawn this shaman bigger than my first two tests and this has resulted in a much more detailed image that works effectively for a screen print positive. I think if I am going to be making a range of these shaman heads for my final images, I need to draw them all quite big, possibly A3 to make sure that I can fit as much detail in as I possibly can. I think a big part of getting these prints to be effective is to have high amounts of detail in both the animas and shamans face. I am however approaching the pencil shading in a slightly different approach to how I usually would.  Because this is for a screen print I'm not making any tonal patches of shading as this wouldn't work when screen printing, so I am making the textures and tones out of small thin lines so they can be effectively transferred onto the screen.

Before this I have never really printed onto a range of stocks. I am now realising that this could be a very good way for me to make my screen printing professional and diverse. Having the white layer on the darker backgrounds really makes the image pop off the page because there is a much higher contrast. I will be continuing to develop a wider range of materials to screen print onto to try and find a new aesthetic that could be used as an image for a product as a sellable screen print.

While I like the prints with a while layer to separate from the dark backgrounds, I thin this one with just the simple red and black on an off-white background seems be be just as or maybe more effective. I think this version could be used as a sellable print or maybe put onto a tote bag.

I do like the simplicity of this print but with my next shaman head I am going to be trying to bring much more approaches to colour. I still want there to be some sort of mystical connection between my images and the spiritual context of my subject, so I will explore this with the use of colour.

 For my next shaman print I will be going further back in american culture and I will be designing a Mayan shaman.