Blisters 2014 | Best Print in House | Ben Rider

posted by Marcroy September 17, 2014

Every year the notorious Print Club London put on a screen printed poster show called Blisters at MC Motors based around a theme. This year the title was Blisters: Sound Sessions with prints inspired by peoples favourite band, song, musician, tour or gig – without using the name within the print. We went along to the show to see what the deal was and we were blown away by this print in particular. Ben Rider is one of those guys that truly understands the print process; he produced his positives manually, injected texture into his print by hand rolling the background white layer and has an excellent colour palette. This guy is definitely one to watch out for, we see great things!

One of Ben’s favourite all time albums is Fat of the Land by The Prodigy, he was tempted with some Massive attack, but felt The Prodigy had a much more energetic, rough, punky aesthetic that fits his style of working perfectly. Once he decided on that, it was the Firestarter track that focused in on.

He began by taking black paper stock, and painted it white. He painted each white background of the edition of 40 individually by hand with a rough dirty roller and stout white paint to then print on top of. He wanted to create a rough textured hap-hazard edge for the print to sit on top of. This gives the energy, roughness, uncleanliness and imperfection by a happy accident – very fitting for his choice of track.

Ben loves putting a hand detail into his work where he can, making each piece unique. Creating a full edition of unique prints.

“Originally I wanted to mix petrol with medium and print that, set the print alight and put it out so the illustration would literally be scorched into the paper stock. But that just had bad idea written all over it.”

He set it up as a 3 layer print and in-line with the mood and energy of the songs, he went for good bright matt fluorescents and arranged the layers so the yellow would overlay on top of the red to make an orange. Finally a glossy black for the key line to make it stand out that bit more from the black border.