Hot off the press / Vers van de pers
at Illustratie Ambassade AMsterdam
Report of the Wobby work weekend on March 19 and 20, 2022
By Noa Zuidervaart (translation Wobby.club)
Original article in Dutch here
On March 19 and 20, 2022, the Illustratie Ambassade, in collaboration with Wobby.club, organized the event Hot off the press / Vers van de pers; a two-day working period during which four enthusiastic illustrators used the Risoprinter to represent the news of the day. The participating illustrators were Nastia Cistakova, Bob Mollema, Sanne Boekel and Saskia Janssen/Studio Ski.
There was no shortage of current affairs for the illustrators, as during the weekend the war in Ukraine remained the topic of the day, the results of the municipal elections had just been announced and hoarders flocked to the supermarket for a bottle of sunflower oil. The enormous number and diversity of themes served as a basis for the illustrators' images and resulted in two walls covered with colorful Riso prints and absurd headlines.
Nastia Cistakova and Bob Mollema start the work weekend on Saturday. They invade the Meterhuis like a two-headed whirlwind full of energy and inspiration, and throw themselves into work. Nastia, who has Russian roots, starts a drawing about the exclusion of Russians from the Nijmeegse Vierdaagse (The International Four Day Marches Nijmegen). She finds the news ridiculous and endorses her image of a crying walker with: 'Dutch Four Day March walkers should answer for all the naughty things Holland has done to me: a Russian!'
Bob takes a different tack and draws two plates of a creepy dog. He explains: 'When you're working with news, it's a challenge to avoid making your image irrelevant the very next day. To avoid that, I like to revert to elements and anecdotes that have taken place before.' With his illustrations, he refers to a 2007 consultation between Putin and Merkel, to which Putin brought his faithful four-legged dog Konni to intimidate the German Chancellor. 'The dog has become for me a symbol of Russian brutality,' Bob explains.
Both Bob's and Nastia's designs are transformed into red-yellow-and-blue prints by skilled Wobby worker and illustrator Bobbi Oskam. This is done by means of a so-called risoprinter: a special stencil machine that allows you to print by color layer and works on the same principles as screen printing. The technology was developed in Japan in the 1980s and has been extremely popular among designers, illustrators and independent publishers for a number of years now. That's because of how the printer can bring drawings to life with bright colors and a unique character.
On day two Bobbi is also present to help the illustrators with the risoprinter. On Sunday, illustrators Sanne Boekel and Saskia Janssen of Studio Ski are present: they fill the Meterhuis with a totally different energy than the day before. Where Bob and Nastia bounced back and forth like two bouncing balls between their workplace and the risoprinter, Saskia and Sanne are diligently sketching and chatting.
The production is no less. Sanne and Saskia also keep to a schedule of their own: one drawing per hour, and they keep to it. During the day, Saskia focuses mainly on the hunt for sunflower oil, but also draws a cheerful Putin who is about to sink his teeth into a hamburger: 'The eight hundred Russian Burger King franchise restaurants refuse to close their doors, despite the request of their parent company.'
On the other side of the desk, Sanne is working on a collection of witty word and image jokes. She has compiled a whole list of them that she looks at from time to time for inspiration. Her elaborations include a thermosstat with a low value and the caption "cold war," and a flaming Molotov cocktail with the words ‘happy hour?’ Finally, Sanne and Saskia join forces and create an illustration that is printed with the risoprinter in the last minutes of the working afternoon.
