While we were swanning around Barcelona I got chance to sit down and have a chat with some of the amazing artists exhibiting at Flatstock, here's my interview with Justin Santora. Take a look at more of Justin's work atJUSTINSANTORA.COM or you can buy Justin's prints at our new real life shop! Percy Gullivers Printshop and Social situated on the top floor of The Shipping Forecast, 15 Slater Street, Liverpool UK.
We have a few special walls dedicated to Justin because we like him so much!
So here's the interview, it's really good. If you ever wanted to know how rock poster artists start out then this is really informative and I learnt a lot chatting to Justin. He's a stand out chap and we wish him all the best!
Hi! I’m Justin Santora, I’m from Chicago Illinois in the United States, I make rock posters, Screen printed artwork, various illustrations and I like riding my bike.
So Justin how are you finding Flatstock Barcelona?
It’s the first time I’ve been to Barcelona and it’s also the first time Flatstock has been held in Barcelona. We seem to be all under the consensus that it’s all pretty slow in terms of sales. This is my first time of ever being in a flatstock where this is the first time flatstock has been in that city. So I wasn’t sure what to expect, it’s been well received by people that are interested but I don’t think enough people know about it. Maybe it could be one of those things where a few more years of it being here every year it could be how Germany is now with Hamburg and how Chicago is with Pitchfork fest.
After this I’ll be doing Pitchfork in Chicago, there’s always a flatstock there, I plan on being back in Hamburg for the Rheeperbahn festival.
There wont be a flatstock in Seattle this year though I did count on going to it we’re all pretty disappointed that it is cancelled.
You mentioned to me before the interview that you take reference photos before starting one of your illustrations.
By no means am I a photographer, I use reference photos originally but they are really poorly executed photographs, it’s just I need to be able to look at something so I don’t forget details, it means I get a much more accurate depiction with more fun details to draw. My photos that I use technically are atrocious. They’re just either taken with my phone or a little $200 snapshot camera but I have it, especially for things like body positions, if you want to draw someone doing something it’s great to get proportions and posture correct to make figures look more human and more lifelike.
Would you be able to go through your methods when from start to finish when you design a gig poster or art print?
Sure! A typical print will start with a really rough thumbnail sketch and at that point when I have a rough idea of what I want to do , I will procure or seek out reference photos to make a drawing. I’ll loosely sketch in elements of the composition with pencil and from there just continue to flesh out details and refine refine refine, until the drawing looks how I want it. I’ll put a clean sheet of paper right down on top of that sheet of paper and illuminate the paper from behind on my light table. And then I use all the pencil work I’ve done as a guide for inking, which I do with a brush, usually a brush pen, or really small micron pens, usually a combination of the two.
When the finished drawing is ready to go I work in lettering, which is done pretty much the exact same way, with pencil work as a guide and then ink on top.
I’ll take my finished artwork to the copy shop and transfer the artwork onto a type of film called Dura-Lar with a blueprint printer sometimes enlarged by a small amount, take the film home and then I cut my colour separations out of a thing called Rubylith which is a light masking film it’ll determine what colours will pass through your screen with the photo process, usually all those films are hand inked. Once the first colour is mapped out how I want it I print that. Take that over to the light table lay some more film over the top and figure out what the next colour is going to be, and do that til I finally get back to that line art that I originally made the film from and print that at that point sometimes there’s another accent colour or two, but for something like a rock poster which is only three or four colours it usually ends in the keyline film. So yeah! It’s all printed by hand all drawn by hand After that I just go though the prints, pick out the bad ones and put them in a pile somewhere all the good ones stay to get signed and numbered.
How did you first become involved in the rock poster scene and screen printing in particular?
I was on a trajectory to becoming a high school art teacher, when I was playing in bands a lot at age 19 a friend of mine had remarked that I could be a teacher and have the summers off to tour, I thought ok that’s a good idea And didn’t really give it any more thought than I would still be doing music and wanting to tour all the time, I was laboring under that assumption. So just about the time I was about to start doing all the hardcore education courses my band had dissolved and I wasn’t playing music very regularly but I was still on this academic course, not giving it very much thought other than I didn’t find it very interesting, and by the time I was doing my clinical hours (which is 100 hours of observation and clinical work in a high school the last thing you do before student teaching actually starts) I was becoming acutely aware that I was not interested in working at a high school, it’s obviously a very important profession but I would have felt more comfortable teaching at a college level, which requires a masters. So that was just not my thing but I would not have been able to graduate if I didn’t complete my student teaching.
I was student teaching and hating every minute of it, thinking of what I wanted to do other than looking for a job in a high school. I kind of had vague ideas about maybe going to grad school or teaching at the university level after grad school, maybe working a bunch of part time jobs and trying to make my own art, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do but I knew what I didn’t want to do.
While I was finishing up my university course I had a couple of chance encounters with people who worked in the rock poster world and I was exposed to that. Learned about how they got started, about what they did and I really admired the autonomy they had by being self employed and having an interesting job that they got to put themselves into every day. They’re creating art and illustrations that’s relevant to bands but also relevant to a music scene that they care about. And its coming out of them out of their own head out of their heart out of their pencil and it’s coming from them and going into this music world this part of culture and I was really taken by that.
More than anything kind of taken with the fact that they could come and go as they please because they were self employed. While I was student teaching I was longing for any sort of autonomy. So I vowed that I would learn how to screen print finally, which I’d been interested in for years.
Right after I graduated I started cobbling together whatever used supplies I could find and printing in my bedroom. And it was a disaster at first and I was like this isn’t going to work, but I kept trying. Something kept drawing me back to it, I was going on Gigposter.com and reading about how other people got started, talking about other common problems that people had, trying to troubleshoot and after a lot of trial and error it started coming together and I did my first rock poster, for $150 which barely covered my supplies and I was really excited about it, I thought there’s no going back now.
After the next 6 months making art prints and the occasional rock poster became my main source of income until it was my only source of income and since then I’m just trying to improve, getting more and more comfortable with the medium, more comfortable with doing this as my job.
I get to travel, see the world, meet a lot of great people a lot of great artists. It’s just fun, we’re all friends, we all hang out and we love each others work.
What new projects have you got lined up for the future?
When I get home I’m supposed to print a poster for Aaron Freeman the front man of the now defunct band Ween. I’m supposed to do something for Grace Potter and the Nocturnals . I’ve got an album cover I’ve been working on for an Australian band called Kill The Matador. And I’m also printing a poster for a brewery in California called Brouwerij West.
