About Riso

What is Riso? It's a copy machine! But unlike a traditional copy machine, the inks layer nicely when printed on top of one another. It can make beautiful, full color prints with just a few passes on the machine. Each of my prints is made by printing one color layer at a time, and I carefully watch each print pass as it comes out of the machine to achieve the best possible registration.

Imagine a screen printing or woodblock printing process where one color is applied to paper one pass at a time – this is similar to what I'm doing with the Riso, but the inks are essentially translucent, allowing them to layer and create new colors. The unique tiny dot process in Riso printing helps blend colors, and this process is made possible because the screen is created by the machine rather than chemically burned or hand carved. This allows me to create a wide range of colors and fine, nuanced gradients by layering different opacities of just a few inks. My favorite combination is yellow, fluorescent pink, and blue, as it mimics the CMYK process.

~More on Riso~

Riso is a Japanese company that creates Riso Digital Duplicator machines. Artists are drawn to them for their unique textures, vibrant fluorescent colors, ease of use, and environmentally friendly production. Riso machines are marketed as low-energy, eco-friendly printers that use natural inks. They were initially promoted for schools, churches, and businesses as fast, single color, energy-friendly printing solutions. Artists began using Riso regularly in the early 2000s, printing art books and comics, and Riso has since spurred a print renaissance, with an explosion of self-published work.

Riso is a fast, fun, but imperfect printing style that allows creators to efficiently produce vibrant, textured prints, regardless of the subject. Prints are created by layering one color at a time, similar to screen printing, to build a full-color image. Not all prints come out perfectly; sometimes slight misregistration occurs, making each print unique. While only the best-registered prints make it to my shelves, those that don't quite meet the standard or were test prints become business card backs and are collected to create new "bad print" sets. I hate wasting paper, so I always look for fun ways to repurpose prints and transform them into something even more special.

In my studio I have access to nine Riso ink colors: fluorescent pink, yellow, blue, federal blue, kelly green, orchid, aqua, fluorescent orange and scarlet red. Lately I've been mainly using three colors to create a faux CMYK effect with different colors. Riso inks mix well and I kind of paint with the colors to make full colored prints out of just a few options. One of my favorite parts of the Riso is seeing the results of printing one ink color on top of another color on the paper to get new colors and palettes.

Environmentally friendly ~ The way Riso is able to layer colors so well is because of a combination of the natural oil inks that are specific to Riso as well as the random dot generation in the screens (or Masters) that the ink is pushed through onto the paper. The archival inks are ecologically responsible by reducing waste and CO2 in the manufacturing process and the Masters are made out of natural fibers as well! Another special thing about Riso is that there's no heat process involved, so it's a very energy efficient way of printing. All around Riso is a pretty great alternative to traditional copy printing, as it's more environmentally friendly on several fronts. 

There is so much that Riso opens up and makes possible for artists to use as an art form. It makes replicating and distributing artwork easy, and creates satisfying textures and colors that are rare for digital printing. It's also easy to use! With step by step instructions printed on the machine, it's very accessible to anyone new to printmaking and using a copy machine.  

Natalie + Riso ~ Natalie has been working with various Riso machines since 2013. She's worked on friends' machines at the Pencil Factory in Brooklyn, in community spaces like the SVA RisoLAB and Handsaw Press, and now works on her own EZ 590U in her studio in Los Angeles. She was an Artist in Residence at the SVA RisoLAB in 2016 and attended a residency in Kofu, Japan in 2019, creating a new body of Riso-printed work with ink colors unavailable in the US.

She likes to share her love of Riso in workshops and demos around the world and she's made a 5 hour long online workshop where she discusses everything Riso with Gallery Nucleus that you can check out here. 

In Spring 2024 and Fall 2025, she taught a week-long Riso workshop in Denmark at VIA University and regularly hosts workshops in other cities with Riso friends. She sometimes teaches live workshops out of her studio in Atwater Village, in Los Angeles. 

Follow her work on social media or patreon for updates on new Riso work and workshops! Natalie's new art book Dreaming in Color, Published by Peow2 has a big section on Riso too.