Rob Ryan

ROB RYAN CALENDAR 2016

We are pleased to announce that Rob’s new and ever popular wall calendar is now out!!!

The calendar features 12 brand new papercut images photographed on their cutting mat with the cuttings scattered around them. Rob took a real behind-the-scenes approach to this years calendar, its a real departure from the three he has created previously and we think it’s the best yet!  We hope you like it as much as we do!

Rob began working on the calendar last summer (a whole year ago!). As each picture was drawn by Rob it was handed over to Rob’s assistant Michelle to cut the image by carefully following Rob’s line.

Many of the papercuts were coloured previously to cutting which is a new way of working for us. First Rob decided the colour he would like the papercut to be, selecting a pantone colour for Tom to match. Once Tom had mixed the colour he printed this through a blank screen onto a piece of cutting paper so that the whole of the screen area transferred the colour onto the paper below.

Once dry the printed coloured paper was then placed underneath Rob’s drawing. Michelle cut through two layers and once complete the top layer with Rob’s drawn line was discarded leaving the coloured papercut remaining.

Michelle was careful to keep every cutting safe for the photography stage later!

Once all 12 images had been cut it was time to experiment with different coloured cutting mats (this is where we cheated a little!). Although Rob has quite a collection, due to the size and colour limitations of cutting mats available Libby scanned one of our large cutting mats and digitally manipulated the colour on the grid background on the computer. We then had the coloured cutting mat backgrounds digitally printed. Here we are laying the papercuts over the top to check the colours worked as well as we’d hoped.

Once we were happy with the colour combinations all the artworks were carefully packaged and taken to Packshot where Peter expertly photographed them with the assistance of Rob, Libby and Michelle.

Many hands were required to gently manipulate the papercuts to ensure there was the right amount of shadow in each image and to scatter the cuttings which we altered in several shots to give us a few options when it came to cropping the image.

Rob and Libby then looked at the images and cropped them accordingly. It was then a case of colouring the calendar grids which took lots of mocking up until we were happy with the colour combinations.

The calendar is published by Rizzoli and available now from our online shop and Rob’s shop Ryantown. 2016 will be here soon enough so it’s not too early to get your hands on one!!!

Sarah McPhee
Studio Assistant